From Expert Student to Novice Professional

Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education Volume 5 Series Editors A. Lieberman, The Carneg...

Author: Anna Reid | Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren | Lars Owe Dahlgren | Peter Petocz

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Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education Volume 5

Series Editors A. Lieberman, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Stanford, USA J. Furlong, Department of Education, University of Oxford, U.K. P. Blackmore, Kings College London, London, U.K. M. Cochran-Smith, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA C. Sugrue, Cambridge University, Cambridge, U.K. J. Orrell, School of Education, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Christopher Day, University of Nottingham, U.K. Judyth Sachs, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/7908

Anna Reid · Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren · Peter Petocz · Lars Owe Dahlgren

From Expert Student to Novice Professional

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Prof. Anna Reid Sydney University Sydney Conservatorium of Music Macquarie Street Sydney New South Wales Australia [email protected] Assoc. Prof. Peter Petocz Macquarie University Dept. Statistics Sydney New South Wales Australia [email protected]

Prof. Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren Linköping University Dept. Behavioural Sciences & Learning Linköping Sweden [email protected] Prof. Lars Owe Dahlgren Linköping University Dept. Behavioural Sciences & Learning Linköping Sweden [email protected]

ISBN 978-94-007-0249-3 e-ISBN 978-94-007-0250-9 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Contents

1 What’s Happening in Higher Education? . . . . . . . . . What This Book Is About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning for the Professions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Contribution of Formal Learning Situations to Pre-professional Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Contribution of Learners to Pre-professional Learning . Discourses of Higher Education and Working Life . . . . . . Identity, Learning and Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Contribution of the Early Twenty-First Century World to Pre-professional Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Contribution of Earlier Eras to Pre-professional Learning Higher Education, Professions and Internationalisation . . . Communities of Professional Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . Who Are Our Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Is Professional Preparation Experienced? . . . . . . . .

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2 Professional Learning: How Can We Understand Learning for the Professions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodological Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introducing the Professional Entity Project . . . . . . . . . . . Introducing the Journeymen Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Combining the Projects – Issues of Method . . . . . . . . . . A Model for Understanding Professional Learning . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Professional Discourse: How Do Novice Professionals See Themselves? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Professional Discourse? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Do Students Understand Professional Discourses? . . . . The Professional Entity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Examining the Professional Entity from the Context of One Profession – Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Effect of Disciplinary Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professional Discourses and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professional Discourse and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Professional Knowledge: What Does Knowledge Mean to Novice Professionals? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ideas Regarding Disciplines and Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . Students and Novice Professionals’ Conceptions of Knowledge: An Early Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Journeymen Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Influence of Curricular Design and Processes . . . . . . . . Students’ Trajectories of Knowledge Formation . . . . . . . . . Ritual or Rational Preparation for Work Life? . . . . . . . . . . The Complexity of Knowledge Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . Further Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Professional Dispositions: How Are Professional Dispositions Developed in Higher Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Investigating Professional Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Students’ Views of Professional Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . Students’ Views of the Intersections Between Dispositions . . . Broadening the Base for Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Professional Identity: How Is Professional Identity Developed? . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Concept of Identity Formation in the Realm of Studies and Work The Notion of Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Influence of Discipline on Identity Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . Developing Engagement in Learning and a Sense of Identity with a Profession – Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Political Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mathematical Sciences – George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology – Erika . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Engagement and Identity Formation as a Function of Students’ Learning Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Professional Pedagogies: What Pedagogic Can Enhance Professional Learning? . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meta-knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Structure of Professional Curricula . .

Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

The Effect of a Diffuse Field on Learning for Professional Formation The Effect of a Clear Field on Learning for Professional Formation . Balancing Autonomy and Interaction – Acknowledging the Diversity of Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Students’ Ideas About Their Own Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Envisioning a Broad Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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8 What’s the Use of Higher Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Nature of Professions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Expert Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Novice Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Scenario for the Future of Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Designing Curricula – Professional Contextualisation or Disciplinary Organisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Empowering Students in Matters of Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upgrading the Significance of Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interprofessional Learning – A Necessity in a Super-Complex World? Learning as a Social Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Towards Professional Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

What’s Happening in Higher Education?

What This Book Is About Students entering higher education expect that their studies should lead them towards some form of professional career. They come to university with a range of expectations for their learning as well as for the outcomes of their learning. In this age, when complex internationalised professions are the main source of work for graduates, students need to prepare themselves for a future that can be volatile, changeable and challenging. Our overall aim in this book is to show how students navigate their way through learning and become effective students and how they shift the focus of their learning away from the formalism associated with the university situation towards the exigencies of working life. In this sense, we explore how people move from being expert students to novice professionals starting to establish themselves in a profession. When a person is an expert at something they are usually able to demonstrate an excellent skill or understanding, whilst a novice is usually a relative newcomer to an area who will undertake some sort of probation (articulated or not) before he or she can be fully embraced by the particular area. We look at how students become pre-professional experts, in the sense that they hold and demonstrate professional knowledge and dispositions and feel a personal interest and engagement with a specific discipline area that leads them into professional practice. However, when these expert students finally make the transition to working life their professional expertise is subsumed as they take on a novice role in the work place. So, we consider how students make this transition from expert to novice and perhaps back again. To support the ideas presented in this book, we will utilise a decade of research undertaken in countries half a world away from each other – Sweden and Australia – and use the combined outcomes to present a model of professional learning. Rather than building our theory out of our own common experience, we use empirical research gathered from students and teachers to show how students negotiate the forms of professional knowledge they encounter as part of their studies and how they integrate their understandings of a future professional world with professional knowledge and learning. As students move from seeing themselves as learners, they take on more of a novice professional identity, which, in turn, provides a stronger motivation for their formal studies. A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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1 What’s Happening in Higher Education?

Our book presents an epistemology of professional formation in the form of a model which combines cognitive and affective dimensions of knowledge and learning. Simply put, the model is an empirically-based interpretation of how contemporary professional discourses, professional knowledge and professional dispositions interact and influence the development of students’ professional identities. Moreover, the book frames empirical observations by summarising and analysing contemporary theories about the role of higher education from a societal perspective, as well as its significance for the development of individuals. In this chapter, we set the scene for our investigation of learning for the professions. We discuss historical perspectives of higher education in the early twenty-first century within current frames, such as the massification of university education, the emergence of the university of the professions (as opposed to the university of scholarship), and the international context of higher education and learning for a professional life (including perspectives from other cultures). We also look at the blurring of the boundaries between learning at university and learning at work, the development of ideas of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and their manifestation using modern communication technologies, and continuing professional development. We discuss the diverse nature of students and how individuals can be seen as both representative of particular groups – such as those of different ethnicity, gender or professional area – and as individuals who have a unique experience which relates to their personal approaches to working life. We look towards the future and speculate about anticipated changes as the status and hence the power of universities is eroded and replaced by knowledge development in professional workplaces (Boud & Garrick, 1999) and continuing cycles of re-learning and re-skilling for professional workers. We conclude the chapter by exploring how higher education now focuses on the development of the “expert student” and suggest how research and pedagogical activities may support students as they make the transition from formal study into work as a “novice professional”.

Learning for the Professions Learners are the primary concern of higher education. Being involved in higher education is usually seen as a means of developing particular disciplinary knowledge, ways of thinking about oneself, thinking about the social and professional world, and a means of developing the capacity to be part of the world of professional work. The concepts and practices surrounding higher education in regard to these important learner concerns have changed considerably in the last 20 years. The massive increase in the number of universities in the late twentieth century points towards the importance of including diverse disciplines within the academy. The development of technical schools in the post-war period into the 1960s paved the way for their incorporation as modern technological universities in the late twentieth century. This, in turn, pushed the boundaries of what was possible for university education. The

Learning for the Professions

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previously-dominant liberal arts universities made way for, and incorporated, more technical and professional discipline areas. In the early twenty-first century, most Western countries were left with uneasy relationships between long-established and well-funded universities and their relatively younger siblings. Regardless of the institution in which students find themselves, there is a commonality for learners in that they generally expect that their degree will prepare them in some way for their future life and aspirations. Some students will still adopt the liberal arts attitude, where they will expect to learn something about themselves which will enrich their possible futures. Other students will expect to acquire a range of skills associated with a particular profession to enable a quick movement into working life. Yet others anticipate learning what a particular profession is like with the expectation that they can then fluidly use their professional skills and knowledge in a professional workplace. In this sense, we now wonder what it is to be a professional. Is it about coming to know what a specific profession is about? Is it about developing the skills of a particular profession? Is it about acquiring and understanding a professional body of knowledge? Is it about taking a personal stance in relation to a profession? Is it a way of behaving? Or a way of thinking? Entering an educational program in higher education can be seen as the start of a trajectory of professional formation, which includes both the appropriation of a body of knowledge and of the history, social practices, skills and discourses that are part of the respective discipline or profession that is studied. The role of higher education in society, as well as its traditions regarding knowledge and learning, has been debated intensely (for instance, see Barnett, 1994). The hegemony of higher education through the double role of both producer and conveyer of knowledge has been questioned, and the debate has to a large extent focused on whether higher education prepares students in a relevant way in relation to the demands of working life. Previously, a first degree could lead to work within a specific sector that was likely to be the only discipline area in which a graduate would work for their lifetime. Knowledge was conceived of in a rather static way, in which the content of a degree would be received at university and used at work. In the twenty-first century, knowledge is seen as something rather more malleable, developmental, personal, integrated, work and leisure related, and so on. Hence, students’ understanding of the nature of knowledge in their discipline is an epistemological concern, and students’ understanding of themselves as constructors and users of knowledge is rather an ontological concern. Obviously, these two orientations involve each other – one focusing on the notion of what the learner knows and the other on who the learner is. The natural orientation of a university is to focus on the students’ accredited learning outcomes, or what learners know. However, it seems more likely that the natural orientation of students is a focus on who they are becoming as well as on what they know. Learners entering higher education expect that their studies should lead them towards some form of professional career. They want to take on an identity that says “I am becoming a lawyer”. The university contributes to this identity formation through a focus on epistemological concerns – what a student is coming to know – and on the nature of knowledge in a particular field.

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The Contribution of Formal Learning Situations to Pre-professional Learning Universities set up expectations of specific learning outcomes which are tied to curriculum and sometimes to a university’s mission statement. Such a mission statement may show that the institution is oriented towards the liberal arts, or to technology, or to social justice, for instance. These statements influence the sorts of curricula that are developed. However, the curriculum is developed over time by academics with specific disciplinary and professional knowledge. Student learning is then usually assessed against the aims of the overall curriculum and may be at odds with students’ own learning intentions and outcomes. In some world regions, such as in Europe with the Bologna process (Keeling, 2006), universities try to harmonise course outcomes and length of study opportunities to enable the quick recognition of student qualifications from country to country. University-devised learning outcomes focus to a large extent on providing a means for students to demonstrate the acquisition or mastery of a particular body of knowledge that is deemed to be appropriate for specific professional areas. That body of knowledge is traditionally derived from academics’ affiliation with a particular profession, developed by research in the field and discussion with others, and mediated through the university’s course approval requirements. In this regard, knowledge in a particular area is usually presented as a bound set of requirements. Course notes and unit outcomes, the learning and teaching approach, assessments and examinations, and general discussion amongst the student body, all combine to provide for students a picture of what constitutes knowledge in a particular area. However, there is only a small amount of research that reports on how students experience and respond to this kind of knowledge package. In addition to the contained knowledge sets that are presented to students, many universities attempt to add value to students’ experiences at university by publishing a list of generic skills (such as communication, teamwork or ethics) that may be encountered during their studies. Depending on the context, these skills may be directly addressed within specific courses, or simply assumed to be adopted in the general course of education. Increasingly it is suggested that the reason for including these types of skills is to ensure that graduates are more employable, and that future employers demand their skills. Although there are some exceptions (some of which are the focus of Chapter 5), it is mostly the “easy” generic skills (capabilities, attributes) that are the focus of development at university. For instance, it is relatively straightforward to put together learning activities that foster group work and competencies related to group work can readily be observed and assessed (Dyball, Reid, Ross, & Schoch, 2007; Michaelsen, Bauman Knight, & Fink, 2002). However, in a broader context, some curriculum approaches (such as problem-based learning) foster a more integrated means of developing students’ generic capabilities. Thompson, Treleaven, Kamvounias, Beem and Hill (2008), for instance, recognising that the more challenging generic skills are less well understood by teachers as possible curriculum inclusions, developed an on-line assessment system where word stems were used to stimulate teacher thinking about the way in which such skills are

Discourses of Higher Education and Working Life

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included in assessment tasks. Barrie (2007) suggests that there are no uniform ways in which teachers understand these types of skills or attributes, but rather, “they vary in terms of the nature of the outcomes, ranging from atomistic, low-level technical and personal skills, to holistic interwoven abilities and aptitudes for learning” (p. 440). Consequently, teachers and students were encouraged to consider the relationships between generic capability and discipline knowledge and activity. Despite these instances, there is very little research that looks at how students experience and understand these skills in relation to their future professional work. So, how do students understand key generic skills for their professional formation?

The Contribution of Learners to Pre-professional Learning These two important epistemological orientations in higher education – curriculumbased knowledge and generic skills – constitute only a part of students’ overall experience of learning. Students come to university with a range of expectations for their learning, as well as for the outcomes of their learning, that move beyond those that are formalised. In this regard, students arrive with an idea about the value of their university study for their futures. They may have family or friends, or teachers, or television shows that provide them with a picture of what their possible professional future could be like. This picture is further developed and altered by the view of the profession presented through the curriculum: and university life is only one aspect of their experience, which combines with formal and informal general life experiences. These combined experiences afford a means through which students develop an idea of themselves as learners, workers, professionals, friends and collaborators. In other words, students’ main learning outcomes are usually not those things that can be solidly accredited by the university, but those things that relate to the core internal value of the student – their identity. The notion of identity is not an easy one to untangle. For the purpose of this book on learning, we view identity as multifaceted, and acknowledge that awareness of one’s own identity is also related to the situations in which people find themselves. For instance, while sitting in a university class, identity may be construed as a learning identity, as a communicative identity, or as a social identity. This is not a typically psychological view, but rather one that recognises identity transformations. In later chapters, we will see how students talk about their changing perceptions of identity as they travel through different life experiences. So, how do we know how students understand the notion of identity in relation to their aspirations, studies, professional work, and social life? In other words, taking an ontological perspective, who are these students becoming? These questions form the basis of discussion in Chapter 6.

Discourses of Higher Education and Working Life There are several discourses that compete and complement each other as they constitute the backdrop for the ideas about pedagogies for professional learning discussed in this book. Dahlgren’s team (Dahlgren et al., 2005) have previously defined four

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discourses that are discernible in the literature and that have influenced the debate about higher education and its relation to working life. The first discourse concerns the call for knowledge production as a joint enterprise between universities and the surrounding society. The hegemony of universities has been challenged (Gibbons, Nowotny, & Schwartzmann, 1994), since knowledge is no longer produced only in university settings but is also increasingly found in a range of different locations such as government and industrial laboratories. Governments in the twenty-first century have promoted an enhanced role for universities, and at the same time have emphasised the importance of studying the relationships between university, industry and government as a “triple helix” (Etzkowitz, Webster, Gebhardt, & Cantisano Terra, 2000). Etzkowitz’s group claimed that in the knowledge-based economy, universities are critical components for innovation, since they act both as human capital providers and seed-beds for new companies. The call for joint knowledge production between universities and the surrounding world can be interpreted as challenging the local practices of everyday university life to move towards performance determined by the market economy rules. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, we see this coming through as a global trend regarding changing systems for the governance and funding of universities, modelled on a performance-based market economy. The lack of stable forecasts about the nature of future tasks in working life and the qualifications needed for them makes the issue of feasibility of study programs, the requirements in working life and the relationship between higher education and working life complex (Barnett, 1994, 2000b). In a Swedish state survey on the new conditions for learning in higher education and the requirements for the twenty-first century (SOU, 2001, p. 13), it is argued that work in qualified positions in contemporary working life requires, in addition to specific knowledge and skills, general abilities of independent learning and an ability to formulate, analyse and solve problems. We will return in Chapter 7 to a discussion of how pedagogies for professional learning could prepare graduates to achieve such capabilities, needed for professionals the changing world of work. The second discourse, Dahlgren argues, comprises the call for new research perspectives on the relationship between higher education and work. The relationship between higher education and working life is an area of research that has attracted increasing interest among researchers in recent years. Brennan, Kogan and Teichler (1996), in their review of research on the transition from higher education to working life, found that the research has predominantly concerned either the systems level, with a focus on the match between the output of higher education and the societal demands for academically-trained personnel, or studies on the expediency of higher education as assessed retroactively by novice professionals. They argue that the transition is often described in rather general categories, and there is little concern about the experienced impact of the education or the specific work task requirements. The third discourse concerns the call for contextualising the research on higher education within the experiences of the students. A more recent review of the field by Johnston (2003), points out that there is still little information in the research literature on graduate employment from the graduates’ own perspective. There is a

Identity, Learning and Engagement

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need for research focusing on experiences of graduates in their early employment years, she argues, particularly as regards their working conditions and culture. Other areas where she identifies a need for more research include the relationships between higher education and work, fulfilment issues such as the nature and extent of graduates’ job expectations, satisfaction and commitment, and relationships between employers’ and graduates’ expectations. In this book, we are basing our arguments for pedagogies for professional learning on empirical studies of students’ and graduates’ experiences of their educational programs in a broad array of disciplinary and professional fields within higher education. Dahlgren’s fourth discourse constitutes a call for alternative pedagogies to equip students in a better way for the transition between higher education and working life. In the following sections, we will look at how differences in ontological and epistemological standpoints impact on students’ experiences of their study program, their ideas of the nature of knowledge and their learning process. We would also propose adding a fifth discourse to Dahlgren’s four, that of professional discourse and students’ understanding of their future profession. This suggests a dialectic where the way the profession is represented becomes a part of students’ knowledge of the profession and contributes to their orientation for learning about the profession. This is the focus of Chapter 3. There has been a shift in the understanding of students’ transitions from higher education into working life. Recognition of these transition problems has brought about a number of new designs and pedagogical approaches within higher education, such as project-oriented education and problem-based learning (PBL). In the last two decades, there have been several attempts at collating the research on the impact of PBL through extensive literature reviews and meta-analyses (Albanese & Mitchell, 1993; Vernon & Blake, 1993; Colliver, 2000; Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003). Abrandt Dahlgren (2000) and Abrandt Dahlgren and Dahlgren (2003) have also shown that ways of implementing student-centred pedagogies are affected by specific contextual factors and conditions of different fields of knowledge in higher education. These pedagogical factors will be addressed in Chapter 7.

Identity, Learning and Engagement We take the position that students attend to who they are becoming and what they are coming to know as essential aspects of their student and pre-professional identities. We have some knowledge of aspects of identity formation from areas beyond higher education. Taylor (2008, p. 29) identifies four positions from other literatures: they comprise an identity that can be “taken on”, where a person identifies with a particular practice and faithfully adopts given truths; an identity that is based on reflection and scepticism; an identity that is “co-constructed”, where rational and non-reflective positions may coincide; and a continuously-developing identity that is constantly shifting through contact with different contexts and is indeterminate, partial and complex. These positions illuminate different aspects of identity formation,

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and by taking the last position as most inclusive, we can see that it allows for consistency and inconsistency to coexist in a particular person’s experience. This approach seems fruitful, as each individual moves through different contexts, some of which are more personally meaningful than others. In this book, we will be exploring the intersections between identity and engagement through the presentation and discussion of an empirically-derived model. In that model, identity and engagement with studies and work are presented as somewhat fluid and related to an individual’s experiences. Sharrock (2002, p. 156) indicates that a student may go through several metamorphoses: She might also be a novice, acquiring the habits and values of a vocation; or an investor (of time, effort, fees), acquiring the knowledge and credentials to pursue a professional career; or an intellectual tourist, with no clear destination. She cannot be reduced to a single subjectivity, instrumental or not. Insisting on a simple definition, market-oriented or not, does nothing to enhance her education.

These multiple subjectivities recognise that a student moves fluidly from one reality to another. Batchelor (2008) suggests that identity includes a component of “voice” where students are able to move through different stages of self-awareness until a stage of “completeness” is arrived at. This, in turn, implies that persons have the ability to look forward and backwards, and be constantly in a position to reflect on their thoughts, knowledge, actions and reactions. Batchelor proposes that voice includes “an epistemological voice, or a voice for knowing; a practical voice, or a voice for doing; and an ontological voice, or a voice for being and becoming” (p. 45). So, what impact does the development of identity and voice have for learning and professional work? In the material we present in Chapter 6, we show that students’ learning and professional identities are, in part, formulated by their understanding of the nature of professional knowledge as it is presented through formal education, and their perceptions surrounding the nature of their future professional work. Interestingly, there appears to be a relationship between a strong or weak sort of identity and their engagement with studies. This suggests that coming to know oneself, and the way in which the self interacts with formal learning and perceptual thinking, spans ontological and epistemological notions, that is, who a student is becoming, and what they are coming to know. Engagement with studies has been considered in various different ways. At its simplest level, engagement has been described as time on task, which provides a somewhat false measure. Students can spend a lot of time working on a particular activity because they are really interested, or because the task is demanding, or because they have no background in the area, or because the task was ill-constructed. Richardson and Long (2003, p. 223) suggest the following: Researchers have used the term ‘engagement’ to refer to ‘the quality of effort students themselves devote to educationally purposeful activities that contribute directly to desired outcomes’ (Hu & Kuh, 2002, p. 555). But are the ‘desired outcomes’ generated by learners or their assessors? It is generally agreed that involvement in both the academic domain and the social domain is important for enhancing student engagement.

The Contribution of the Early Twenty-First Century World to Pre-professional Learning

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Researchers using evaluation instruments (Coates, 2005; Kuh, 2001) relate engagement in extra-curricular activities (such as playing basketball or volunteering for community projects) with learning in formal studies. They imply that some valuable extra thing is learned through these additional activities. In this variation of time on task, quality of effort is equated with outcome – but what outcomes? Whose outcomes? What intersections can be seen between the person being engaged and the tasks at hand – and where do those tasks sit within the overall professional preparation in which the student is participating?

The Contribution of the Early Twenty-First Century World to Pre-professional Learning During the last two decades, higher education has also experienced a change in context. More students are participating and many of them participate in higher education as international students. This mimics a change in the global economy where complex internationalised professions are the main source of work for graduates. A common disjunction explored is the difference implied by the terms internationalisation and globalisation. Internationalisation in higher education suffers from many definitions, each illuminating a different element of praxis. However, at the centre of internationalisation is a pedagogical concept (Reid & Loxton, 2004), and we suggest that intercultural competence is a core attribute that may be explored when students are in formal education and contextualised when they become professional workers. By globalisation, we mean the interconnections between nations and people which result in an increase in the movement of money, business, goods, people, companies, markets, ideas and images. For higher education – often seen in institutional and national contexts as a market – this means that knowledge and people move swiftly from one national context to another. This, in turn, brings about changes in the ways of thinking about professions, work and learning. With the rapid turns in global economics, most graduates will need to develop the ability to rapidly change their way of working, dealing with people, creating knowledge and adapting to different living situations. In a fast-changing global environment, students will need to prepare themselves for a future that can be volatile, changeable and challenging. So, how do students navigate their way through learning and become effective participants who are able to learn and work in international and professional environments? How do they shift the focus of their learning away from the formalism associated with university courses towards the exigencies of working life? In this sense we explore how people move from being expert students to novice professionals. Perhaps one way of reconsidering the effect of different knowledge for potential workers is to integrate the different forms of knowledge that are beloved of universities and workplaces. For instance, Barnett (1994) interrogates the differences between the ideas of academic competence and operational competence. Students may negotiate the academic learning place (as opposed to workplace) with

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a competence that demonstrates their ability to participate in learning activities, assessment tasks, examinations, small-group study, problem-based learning, and so on. This particular learning competence develops a certain picture of a profession and the published curriculum is privileged for its role in directing and representing the value of professional knowledge. Peters (2002) also indicates that knowledge is a commodity that can be traded – but not expended. Hence, professionals who can learn and re-constitute knowledge are favoured in work situations. Here, we can start to consider how the university of the professions is generated. In contrast to an education that presumes that learning is the focus, a competency-based framework suggests rather that students are able to make use of their acquired knowledge and experience. The link, then, is between academic competence and operational competence. A commonality is that both are realised through human activity. Hence, we are once again at the position that it is what students know that is important alongside the assumption that graduates will be able to work with that knowledge once they get into the professional workplace. Slowey and Watson (2003) extend the discussion beyond the issue of academic or operational competence as they investigate the important connection between higher education and work. They suggest that the former is a form of socialisation and the latter is an economic construct. In the early twenty-first century, students look in anticipation and some trepidation to their possible professional futures, which will be characterised by swift changes requiring rapid re-interpretations of previously understood and applied knowledge. Slowey and Watson explore learning from a broad perspective which acknowledges that learning is life-long and is re-focused in different life stages.

The Contribution of Earlier Eras to Pre-professional Learning If we take account of historical perspectives, we can see that knowledge has been reassessed and transformed in the previous century. There has always been an uneasy relationship between the idea of learning for learning’s sake (a view developed from a time where higher education was the domain of an elite wealthy class, usually male) where learning was considered a form of leisure activity, and the contemporary view of learning for the professions. Imagine these two perspectives as a game of tug-of-war where at various times within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries one or other perspective has gained ground. We suggest that higher education plays a role in the formation of social and professional identity among groups of students who may be in different academic programs and that the nature and focus of the programs make a contribution to that identity formation. From earliest times universities have educated doctors, lawyers and clergymen. These distinct professions form a world-view that higher education is related to preparation of professionals. The more established the profession over time, the more legitimate that profession’s inclusion in the academy seems. For instance, a relative new-comer is mechanical engineering, which has been included in the academy for only around 100 years. Other professional areas have more recently

The Contribution of Earlier Eras to Pre-professional Learning

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become parts of higher education, for instance designers, statisticians, chiropractors, computer scientists and psychologists. Watts (2000) presents an ideology of professionalism comprising a specialist knowledge base, autonomy and service, where the specialist knowledge provides the profession with social recognition and “forms the basis of the professional skills and knowledge that are offered to the client” (p. 118). Universities have a long tradition of educating professionals of various categories and the higher education system has now expanded to include an ever-increasing number of professional groups. Those professions that have been previously embraced by the university system have had time to establish pedagogic and social traditions, while those that are more recent are in the process of aligning a university education with the labour needs of their profession. In the globalised and changing world, where the role of universities is changing and being debated, and where the world of work is also changing through the rapid development of new technology, the question has been raised of how higher education prepares its students for unknown future demands. Regardless of the era in which any profession became part of the academy, in the twenty-first century we face a situation where most school leavers will expect to gain post-school qualifications, and many of them within the university. In this era of mass participation in higher education, there is a related inclusiveness where work areas develop a professional and social status through inclusion in the academy. A central question that we seek to explore, then, is to what extent professional training impacts on the way people identify with their profession in more profound ways or whether they move between different identities as they traverse higher education, work and life in general. Indeed, Marginson (2002) says that “social meaning derives not from producing use values for others but from investing in oneself” and that “students are asked to choose the ‘right’ course for ‘themselves’ before they have become what their selves will be” (p. 124). How does the nature of a profession impact on identity formation? How do students engage with learning based on their professional expectations? How do their learning experiences and expectations lead towards their professional formation? How do national politics and economic environment impact on professional formation? Just how do students move from the academy into working life? Eraut (1994) focuses on the idea of “professionalism”, the personal characteristics that an individual has that may benefit an organisation. This is an interesting idea, that professionalism is a trait belonging to an individual prior to their participation in the workplace, and once established in the workplace, an attribute that is highly regarded. Here we see an example of the multiple expectations placed on new professionals; that they must have already come to think of themselves as a member of a specific profession and adopt the characteristics of valued workers within that profession. From these perspectives we can see that professionalism is perhaps something that can be developed in a situation other than work. As prework situations are now generally found in the university, it would seem appropriate for universities to strongly align their curriculum with the values of the workplace. In essence, this shifts our attention from the university of learning, towards the university of the professions.

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In contrast, Boud and Solomon (2001), and their chapter authors, look at legitimising the forms of learning that occur through work. They focus on the means through which work-based learning can be expressed, facilitated and accredited. Billett (2001) concurs and suggests a curriculum appropriate for learning in work situations and a guide for organisational change to support such learning. This discussion contrasts with the position of the university of the professions, as learning in work-based situations is clearly effective and yet is situated outside the academy. Evidently, there is a blurring of boundaries between the sort of learning that occurs at university and at work.

Higher Education, Professions and Internationalisation Although this book is written from a largely Eurocentric, Western perspective, we find that higher education is now a vehicle for worldwide mobility which, perforce, must be inclusive of different cultural perspectives, gender, ethnicity and opportunity. Where universities could once claim that they prepared students for particular professions, those professions are now located in a complex international world. Increasingly, students are becoming aware that their learning colleagues and future professional co-workers will have a wide variety of different educational, cultural and world experiences – all of which contribute to students’ identity as learners and future professionals. Literature shows a range of views of internationalisation which highlights the importance of either educational or economic development (Ball, 1998), changing behaviours to preserve the world’s resources, the development of empathy towards other peoples and cultures (Andreson, 1999), and the reconsideration of one’s own need to keep learning about the world. Cultural imperialism and the decline of local cultures is a by-product of internationalisation, where the knowledge of smaller ethnic groups may be swallowed by larger groups. This has important implications for higher education as students from “Majority” world nations seek “Minority” world (that is, Western) qualifications. In this sense, beliefs about knowledge shift as taken-for-granted ideas and practices are challenged in different world locations. Knowledge can suffer a form of homogenisation as student mobility focuses attention on the management of the recruitment of students from one nation to another, and the delivery of courses in countries other than the one in which they were developed (Fallshaw, 2003). Most tertiary students in Western countries study in cohorts containing students from many countries, unlikely to share cultural and pedagogical values. There is an expectation that all students will need to adjust to different learning cultures and negotiate language in diverse social and academic contexts. Rizvi (2000) points out that internationalisation must consider the “globallocal relationship” (that is, the situatedness of knowledge). The very idea that knowledge can be marketed emphasises the notion that it is finite and unchanging, and this perspective is sustained by educational practices that encourage memorisation and recall of facts. However, we maintain that internationalisation can be viewed as a value – one of a cluster of higher-level graduate dispositions, along with

Communities of Professional Practice

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concepts such as ethics, sustainability and creativity – and that these dispositions can be fostered through the development of a curriculum with carefully aligned objectives and activities. So, how do students come to think of themselves as part of an international professional community?

Communities of Professional Practice The concept of a community of practice has influenced the way that we understand learning in universities. The idea of a community of practice was first established by Wenger (1998) in business contexts. Wenger’s website says that: “Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour.” He suggests that people involved in such communities share a particular passion, that they actively discuss issues and share concepts with each other, and that they develop a particular expertise or practice through that engagement. Ideologically, universities suggest that current and former students, academics and the community are all part of the general concept of a university contributing to the development and use of knowledge. However, if Wenger’s model is to be taken seriously, then all participants should logically attest to the same collaborative level of commitment to the academic enterprise (which does not necessarily happen, as newcomers – such as students new the university – do not always participate in the same ways as do those who have been there for a longer time). Students also experience a sort of liminality, beginning their studies as members of many communities of practice, but not full members of the academic community. As they become expert students, they move more into the focus of the community and its practice whilst simultaneously exploring the liminal spaces between a university community and a professional one. In a way, students can be thought of as “shape shifters” as they move between different discourses and practices while they develop their view of themselves and incorporate a professional perspective in this view. Students are involved in a variety of social and professional communities that contribute towards their preparation for work. Henkel (2005) provides a series of orientations towards their development of professional and social identities suggesting that “academic identities are formed and sustained . . . upon individual and collective values, sense of meaning and self-esteem in the academic profession” (p. 156). From a student’s perspective, this implies that the potential profession contributes to their “sense of being” (Reid & Solomonides, 2007) that is at the core of their ability to transform knowledge as it becomes meaningful in different contexts. Billett (2001, p. 209) suggests the following: It seems learners afforded the richest opportunities for participation reported the strongest development, and that workplace readiness was central to the quality of experiences. Readiness is more than the preparedness for guided learning to proceed. It also includes the norms and work practices that constitute the invitational qualities for individuals to participate in and learn through work.

So, here we must consider the notion of affordance. If Billett’s suggestion is robust, the students who are involved with rich learning opportunities seem to

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have a better chance of adopting professional views prior to any participation in work. Given the range of different course work units, teachers and assessment tasks that students experience, we wonder whether it is possible to deliver a rich learning environment consistently. And, given the background aspirations and experiences of learners, we wonder if a rich environment for one is perceived as a rich environment by another. Nevertheless, Billett’s comments highlight the important interplay between formal learning contexts and work environments for professional formation. Professional formation can also be seen as a process of identity formation within the communities of higher education and working life. Wenger (1998) claims that identities are at the same time one and multiple. A central source of identity formation in the community of practice, according to Wenger, is participation; identity is constituted through the recognition of mutuality in relations of participation. Research in the field of design supports this claim from the perspective of students. Solomonides and Reid (2009) suggest that an ontological core of identity and engagement includes students’ sense of being and a sense of transformation. Here, students acknowledge that their idea of self is entwined with learning. This ontological core is a hub that is surrounded by spokes of a more epistemological kind: professional knowledge, discipline knowledge and engagement. Their model implies a dynamic interplay between the two notions of who the person is becoming, and what they are coming to know. The model also provides an insight into the way that newcomers become part of a community of practice through the process of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), in which the sense of belonging is developed through the relationships between the newcomers and old-timers. In the Journeymen and Professional Entity projects (described in Chapter 2), which form the basis of the research findings explicated in this book, we share the view that the professional identities as described here are only partial and contextually situated in the realm of studies and work. In different disciplines within higher education, the sense of profession and community of practice is more or less strongly present, articulated and communicated to students. To a student, the expectations of what the end result of education might be in terms of professional role, or areas of professional work, might be more or less clearly expressed as they enter the educational program. The learning trajectories, understood as change over time, during the educational process do not necessarily follow a predestined course, but are open to the interaction with and influence of a multitude of sources. So, how do students make the transition to working life as graduates? How are they influenced by the ways that the sense of profession is communicated and articulated through the design and pedagogy of their educational programs?

Who Are Our Students? Students participating in higher education belong to a heterogeneous community. Where individual students focus their learning on particular professional aspirations, each student can also be seen to be representative of several different groups. Some

Who Are Our Students?

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group memberships are fore-grounded and contribute to the student’s own understanding and development of self. For instance, an elite swimmer may be given a scholarship and special tuition support to remediate lost (academic) learning opportunities that had previously been sacrificed for the sport and that will still potentially bring honour to the new academic home. In this example, we can see how an individual’s experience can be interpreted by the academy for different purposes and the complexity of the position of each individual student for the academy in general. Singh and Shrestha (2008) have observed that students experience several different components of admittance to the academy. The context of their discussion was the trans-national movement of students, where they could experience admittance in a variety of ways. One way was as an academic activity where previous educational qualifications are certified by the new institution, their ability to afford their education and living expenses is established, their criminal records exposed, and their physical health examined. Alternatively, admittance could be seen as a confession where they are required to repent of their previous educational experiences by reconciling themselves to the norms of their new academic community, such as learning how to write in a new academic style, and encountered through remedial programs. Or it could be experienced as a recognition of their academic suitability through a shared disciplinary focus – a form of educational capital. Nyström (2009) tackles the issue of gender in early career professionals’ new workplaces. She suggest that two themes are evident, “positioning” and “acquiring legitimacy”, and that these themes describe how her respondents experienced and reacted to gender in their professional contexts. When they “do gender” (that is, behave in the light of expected male and female roles), they also produce and reproduce a gendered notion of a professional project that influences their professional practice and the way they position themselves as a professional person with knowledge and competence. While contemporary discrimination and employment laws imply a form of gender neutrality, students and novice professionals are not gender neutral and their perspectives and experiences impact on their relations with educators and new work colleagues, and their perception of themselves as professionals. Hence, higher education can be seen as a preliminary step in students’ movement towards particular social and occupational positions that affects their career choices and preparation. Far from being a trivial concept, appreciation of gender within formal and informal learning situations is a key to economic, social and professional emancipation. For instance, this book focuses on transition from expert student to novice professional and implies a context of progression from formal, Western-oriented studies to professional work in an industrialised country. However, the attributes of expert learners may logically be found in informal learning sites, and hence professional work may well include rather more social sites – such as the home for a majority of women in the world. So, what are the attributes of expert learners from their own perspective? How can their expertise enable them to negotiate formal learning situations and translate their experience into social or professional work contexts? By considering the sites where learning for the professions takes place, we can anticipate that the hegemonic stranglehold of formal institutions for professional preparation may well suffer some erosion in the near future. The formalism associated with learning at universities may well need to shift further to take account

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of variation in the experience and locations of learners, with changes in the delivery modes of learning, and with the ascendancy of the workplace as a location of context-driven learning. Indeed, the discussion regarding engagement with studies may look completely different when learning in the workplace is appreciated more seriously, since in that location the context and relevance of knowledge is made apparent and workable. Boud and Garrick (1999) suggest that knowledge development in professional workplaces involves a dynamism that is unusual in university contexts. That dynamism is characterised by cycles of re-learning and re-skilling for professional workers. This emphasis on the importance of learning at the site of work has been recognised by educators within the academy and has resulted in a focus on key skills which would lead to employability (Fallows & Stephens, 2000). In this case, the academy’s knowledge domains are subjugated by the need to focus on the types of skills that are transferable from context to context and that provide support for learning for life. So, we are left with an uneasy interaction between the sort of effective learning that occurs in authentic work situations and the simulations that are included in formal learning contexts. But how do students see this relationship between formal knowledge, professional knowledge, work capabilities and development of their professional selves? Rather than speculate on the questions asked during the course of this chapter, we will start to present empirical evidence from research with students. Many of the issues presented are of interest to students as they develop their notions of professional work. However, the ways in which they describe their experience are not necessarily closely aligned with established higher education discourse. For instance, Wenger’s notions of community of practice and the manner in which participants engage with such a community through active or liminal activities are found in several interview transcripts as participants describe their movement from formal learning to work. In this way, our empirical evidence provides new ways of interpreting established higher education parlance from the perspectives of our student participants. Our empirical research specifically explores the combination of discipline-specific characteristics and individual approaches to the discipline, and suggests approaches to pedagogy that can help students develop a sense of identity that may heighten their engagement with their learning. We found that rather than considering formal studies and work practice as two distinct locations for learning, students were more inclined to take their entire pedagogic experience as an example of professional work, and hence formulate their pre-professional identities from those experiences. Helping students define their own professional identity throughout their university studies seems to be a means by which we as educators may help students become work ready, and at the same time to heighten their engagement with their studies. Specific attention would need to be focused on those disciplinary areas that are seen as more generic in their applications, for students in those areas are more at risk in their development of pre-professional identities. Close relationships with those who are in the professional world of work, and integration of their experiences within curriculum, could also assist in the development of curriculum relevance focused on professional formation. In this sense, we are suggesting that higher education now focuses on the development of the “expert student” and that energy

How Is Professional Preparation Experienced?

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and research starts to explore the way in which students make the transition from formal study into work as a novice professionals.

How Is Professional Preparation Experienced? To answer the questions raised throughout this first chapter we will now begin to explore how students experience their professional preparation. Chapter 2 starts to examine how we can understand learning for the professions and positions the ideas to be presented in later chapters within a theoretical landscape. Chapter 3 explores how novice and pre-professional learners see themselves. Using empirical evidence, we start to see a picture of how they see their future profession and how this vision influences their approach to their courses of study. These pictures can be understood as professional discourses in which learners become involved with the discourses of both learning and the professions. Chapter 4 discusses ideas of professional knowledge and focuses that discussion on students’ experiences of knowledge in some particular discipline areas. It explores how disciplines are presented to students in ways that express the character of their potential profession and yet also highlight how that profession characterises knowledge. Underpinning professional knowledge and discourses are professional dispositions, including some obvious generic skills (such as teamwork, communication and literacy) and some less obvious dispositions (such as ethics, sustainability and creativity). Chapter 5 reports on students’ views of these sorts of professional dispositions and the manner in which they are related to the character of particular professional areas. The results shed light on the contemporary balance between generic skills or attributes and specific professional knowledge that is required by students making the transition from studies in higher education to professional work. In Chapter 6 we examine how professional identity is developed. We discuss the ways in which students develop a sense of identity with their profession, how the nature of the profession impacts on identity formation, how students engage with learning based on their professional expectations, and how their pedagogic experience as a whole leads towards their professional formation. Of particular interest to educators will be Chapter 7, where we re-examine pedagogical approaches in the light of students’ experience of learning for the professions. The idea and role of universities as educational institutions has been debated intensely in relation to societal change and the changing demands of working life. Learning and teaching approaches in universities and their relevance for working life have also been debated and at times critiqued internally. These socio-cultural contexts also impact on the design and delivery of university courses, which in turn influence students’ learning processes. In our concluding chapter, we attempt to answer the broad question: “What’s the use of higher education?” Formulating this question does not imply that we doubt the utility of higher education, but rather expresses our belief in the value of the type of investigations that the book is presenting and scrutinising. The chapter concludes with some speculations about possible developments in higher education with regard to its relationship to working life.

Chapter 2

Professional Learning: How Can We Understand Learning for the Professions?

Introduction The arguments in this book are derived from a set of empirical studies. To assist readers in their interpretations of the material we will position ourselves within a theoretical landscape. We will introduce the two separate research projects that we have been carrying out – the Professional Entity project in Australia and the Journeymen project in Sweden – to investigate students’ views of their future professions and the effect that these views have on their approach to learning. We will describe the basic problem that each of these projects was designed to investigate, a problem that can be formulated using the question that is the subtitle of this chapter: how can we understand learning for the professions? Universities, which have been traditionally focused on learning as an abstract and intellectual endeavour, have in recent times moved the centre of their attention to learning as a preparation for future professional work. The increasing numbers of students attending university worldwide, with greater proportions from non-traditional or international backgrounds, look towards practical as well as intellectual benefits from their tertiary studies. In this situation, as university educators, we would wish to find out what students think about their disciplines, their learning and their future professions in this new context wherein preparation for professional work is the most common goal for tertiary studies. The words of Bowden and Marton (1998, p. 282) are as relevant as they were in a somewhat different context a decade ago: “Ways of seeing have to be found, revealed, discovered, and doing so is well on a par with any research achievement. It is, in fact, a major research achievement and also the key to better learning.” This was the aim of each of the separate projects that will be described in the following sections. However, there is a further and significant step in the investigation. The two separate projects were aimed at the same basic questions and had strong similarities in approach, yet they were carried out by different investigators, in different parts of the world and within different educational contexts. It thus makes sense to investigate jointly the information and the analytic results obtained from both of them. Each of these projects was initially analysed using a phenomenographic approach to the component studies, then extended in various ways to the whole project, using a A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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2 Professional Learning: How Can We Understand Learning for the Professions?

wider range of methodologies. For instance, the Journeymen project included a longitudinal component where students’ development into novice professionals was studied, while the Professional Entity project applied the same methodology to investigations of students’ views of professional dispositions. Finally, the two projects were combined using a qualitative meta-analysis. Later in this chapter, we will describe the steps by which this combination was carried out. We start with the straightforward approach of applying the analytic results from each project to the material obtained by the other project. This leads us, however, to a combination at a more fundamental level. We introduce and describe a model of professional learning that puts together the ideas from the Professional Entity and the Journeymen projects as individual dimensions and adds an interaction between the two projects. In this final form, the results of the two projects are set up orthogonally to each other in the form of a model that elucidates the range of views of knowledge and views of learning for professional work, and intersects these in a range of notions of identity and engagement; identity as an experienced student and novice professional, and engagement with studies and profession. This model forms the centrepiece of the book, introduced and set in a theoretical context in this chapter, with various aspects of it to be elucidated in later chapters. The process undertaken by the authors of this volume also sheds light on research practice in higher education in general. Both projects were devised to find solutions to pedagogical questions and dilemmas. Depending on opportunity and funding, the progress of each of the projects was quite different. For the Professional Entity project, the data were collected progressively with each sub-component analysed and reported in sequence. The outcomes and broader conclusions were established over time. The Journeymen project was conceived as a single funded research project with a defined limit for the start and completion. It may be intriguing for early career researchers to consider both the planned aspects of each of these projects and the serendipitous nature of their eventual combination, as they develop their own research plans. From our joint experience, we can see that the data and outcomes from each project lend a richness to our subsequent interpretive frameworks. Higher education research may well afford more opportunities for such joint re-analysis.

Methodological Approach We wanted to investigate students’ perceptions of their future profession, and their views of their discipline and learning in that discipline. An obvious approach was to ask them directly: both the projects that are introduced in this chapter were carried out with this basic method. Despite the facts that students may only be somewhat familiar with their future profession, that they are in the process of learning about their discipline, and that they view learning from the point of view of a learner rather than a teacher, we believe that students are the prime source for information about these topics and that interviews with students are the best method for getting access

Methodological Approach

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to this information. And an appropriate methodological approach for analysing qualitative information obtained from such interviews is known as phenomenography (Marton & Booth, 1997). Phenomenography is a qualitative and descriptive research approach that aims to investigate empirically how people experience, understand and ascribe meaning to a specific situation or phenomenon in the surrounding world. It was developed as a research approach in the 1970s by Ference Marton and colleagues in Sweden, initially as a way of describing the processes and outcomes of learning from the perspective of the learner (Marton & Säljö, 1976; Marton, Dahlgren, Svensson, & Säljö, 1977). The approach takes a “non-dualistic” perspective, in that learning is seen as a relation between the person doing the learning and the situation that they are experiencing. While phenomenography has always maintained a strong link with investigations of learning (and teaching), it has also been applied to a broader range of experience, for instance, conceptions of a specific discipline, such as accounting (Lucas, 2000) or information science (Bruce, 1999), the notion of remembering in police interrogations (Jönsson, Linell, & Säljö, 1991) or competence in car engine optimisation (Sandberg, 1994). In such studies, data are usually collected using semi-structured interviews, beginning with a small number of key questions and investigating individuals’ particular experience by posing follow-up questions based on their initial responses. An alternative approach is to utilise written artefacts collected possibly for another purpose; for instance, using Nobel prize winners’ acceptance speeches to investigate their conceptions of scientific intuition (Marton, Fensham, & Chaiklin, 1994), or using responses on an open-ended survey question to investigate children’s ideas of environment (Loughland, Reid, & Petocz, 2002). More than three decades of experience with phenomenography has demonstrated many times that when a group of people experience a specific situation or phenomenon they will view it in a small number of qualitatively different ways, as opposed to a continuum of views. Thus, some people appear to share a way of experiencing a certain phenomenon in the surrounding world, whereas others will understand the same phenomenon in other, quite distinct, ways. This counterintuitive finding has been maybe the most significant overall contribution of the approach. Phenomenography focuses on describing those aspects that make one way of seeing the situation qualitatively distinct from another, and aims to explicate the underlying structure of the variation across the group of participants. These conceptions, or distinct ways of viewing a phenomenon, and the relationship between them are referred to as the outcome space for the phenomenon. Further, the conceptions can (usually) be arranged in a hierarchical and inclusive relationship, in terms of the logical definition of the categories themselves and their inter-relationships, and/or the empirical evidence for the categories. There is ample empirical evidence that those categories of experiencing a phenomenon that seem to indicate a more profound understanding appear to comprise a larger number of aspects considered. Moreover, there is also a richer network of relationships between these aspects. In this way, one could talk about a close relationship between width and depth as regards understanding the world. People who seem to hold the “broadest”

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conceptions also show an awareness of the “narrower” categories, while those who seem to hold the narrowest conceptions do not seem to be aware of any broader ones. For these reasons, the broadest conceptions are sometimes described as “most inclusive” and the narrowest conceptions as “most limiting”. This supports a view of learning as the process of qualitative change from narrower, more limited conceptions to broader, more inclusive conceptions (and of teaching as the process of helping students to carry this out). It also indicates why we, as educators, favour the broader, more inclusive categories over the narrower, more limited ones. The phenomenographic methodology was the initial approach to the analysis of each of the research projects that are described in the next sections – the Professional Entity project and the Journeymen project. Then, the analysis was extended in two steps. Firstly, in each project the initial phenomenographic descriptions of conceptions of learning and profession in a specific discipline were extended to an overall summary view of discipline, learning and profession and the relationships between them. The results of this are summarised in the next sections and explored in greater depth in the following two chapters. Secondly, the analytic outcomes from both projects were combined and explored as a whole, using what we have termed a “qualitative meta-analysis”, focusing particularly on aspects of variation and commonality between the two. But before we describe this process in more detail, we will introduce the two component projects.

Introducing the Professional Entity Project The Professional Entity project investigates the relationship between students’ perceptions of their future professional work and their current learning at university. Essentially, it seems that students’ narrower or broader perceptions of their future profession coincide with narrower or broader views of their discipline, and their learning in that discipline. Despite its title, the project has been carried out as a series of separate studies investigating learning in different discipline areas, with information from earlier studies forming the basis of hypotheses that could be tested in later studies. The individual studies have been carried out in Australia, in three tertiary institutions in Sydney (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Technology, Sydney and Macquarie University). Various groups of researchers were involved, in each case including at least one of the authors, and in all, over 200 students have participated in the disparate studies comprising this project. Our investigations into the relationships between perceptions of professional work and learning at university began in the area of music education. In researching students’ conceptions of music, Reid (1997) found that there was a strong relationship between students’ perception of work as a musician and their understanding of their instrumental or vocal learning of music: she named this idea the “Music Entity” (Reid, 1999). At one extreme, a limiting, “technical” view of the music profession corresponded with a learning focus on atomistic musical skills. At the other extreme, an expansive, “personal” view of the profession of music seemed to allow

Introducing the Professional Entity Project

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students to focus their learning on the personal meaningfulness of music. The study aimed to investigate students’ ideas about learning music rather than their perceptions of the music profession, but this seemed to be a significant component of their learning. An important discovery was that encouraging students to broaden their conception of music and their views of the music profession gave them access to a broader range of approaches to learning (Reid, 2000). Another point was that their teachers also had a range of views about the music profession and about music pedagogy, and that – as for students – there was a consistency in the breadth of their views. The exploration was extended firstly into another “obviously creative” field, that of design. Here Davies and Reid (2001) showed that students (and teachers) of design demonstrate the same consistency of views of their profession and of the learning (and teaching) aspects. An obvious progression from these first studies was to move to another area that is not part of the traditional creative disciplines. The next study was carried out with students aiming for professional careers in statistics. In a series of papers, we reported on their conceptions of statistics (Reid & Petocz, 2002), learning in statistics (Petocz & Reid, 2001) and the relationship between their views of learning and teaching in statistics (Petocz & Reid, 2003). Again, it seemed that helping students to expand their view of the profession of statistics also broadened their conceptions of statistics itself and gave them access to a greater range of learning approaches. By now, it seemed reasonable to hypothesise that the relationship between views of professional work and of learning in a particular discipline had similarities across a disparate range of professional disciplines, and this lead to the general notion of the “Professional Entity”. Further studies in law (Reid, Nagarajan, & Dortins, 2006) and mathematics (Reid, Petocz, Smith, Wood, & Dortins, 2003; Reid, Smith, Wood, & Petocz, 2005) and extensions of the music study (Reid & Petocz, 2003) added support to the hypothesis. The abstract notion of the Professional Entity is a way of summarising students’ understanding of professional work and its relationship to their views of their disciplinary learning (and indeed between teachers’ understanding of professional work and its relationship to their views of teaching in that discipline). Despite some variation in different disciplines, there seems to be a strong commonality in the broad outlines of this relationship, summarised as a hierarchy of conceptions at three levels. If a student views their future profession in a limiting way (in the sense that they perceive the profession as being contained within specific boundaries and comprising specific techniques), then not surprisingly this will only afford them a similarly atomistic approach to their learning, focusing on individual technical components. Teachers with similarly limiting views of the profession will set up learning situations that focus on specific technical components of learning, and hence reinforce this view in their students. This is the narrowest extrinsic technical aspect of the Professional Entity. A broader view is described by the extrinsic meaning aspect. Here, the idea of professional work revolves around understanding and developing the meaning of the specific discipline objects that constitute the profession – musical scores,

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designed objects, sets of data, legal cases or mathematical models, for example. Students holding this view will tend to see their learning in terms of increasing their understanding of the discipline through investigating the meaning inherent in such objects, while teachers will tend to focus on highlighting and explicating such discipline objects for the profession. At the broadest intrinsic meaning aspect of the Professional Entity, there is an explicit ontological component to work and study. Students holding this view perceive that their future professional work is related to their own personal and professional being in an essential way. They will characteristically take a personal approach to their discipline and actively integrate their learning with other aspects of their life. Teachers with this view will demonstrate the same personal and essential engagement with their profession, and will set up learning situations that attempt to convey this to their students. It may seem strange to investigate and discuss students’ perceptions of their future profession, as they might be thought to have little information or experience about this, particularly when they first begin their tertiary studies. However, this does not seem to be the case in twenty-first century higher education. Many students have concurrent (or even previous) work experience in the area in which they are studying, and indeed some of them may be working professionally alongside their teachers, as were some of the music students in Reid’s original study. Other students carry out periods of work placement or professionally-linked projects as part of their studies. Even if a student has no direct personal experience of the world of professional work, popular culture will often provide them with stereotypical experiences of working, for example, as a legal professional. Perceptions of their future profession will form a component of most students’ views of the discipline they are studying and will afford them a range of approaches to learning in that discipline. Each of the component studies described above has resulted in a phenomenographic description of students’ conceptions of a specific discipline and of learning in that discipline. The Professional Entity is an analysis at a higher level of the relationships between students’ perceptions of professional work and their conceptions of discipline and learning in a variety of discipline areas. It incorporates the ontological dimension of becoming and being a professional, in the background at the narrower levels and explicit in the broadest level. The following chapter (Chapter 3) gives a more detailed description of the Professional Entity project, of the findings that have come from the component studies, and of the way in which the results have been generalised.

Introducing the Journeymen Project The Journeymen project investigated the experiences and understanding of learning and work of cohort groups in a range of disciplines in four European countries: in Sweden, at Linköping University, these comprised political science, psychology and mechanical engineering. The project was funded by a large grant from the European

Introducing the Journeymen Project

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Union, and carried out during 2001–2004 by an international team headed by one of the authors of this book (Dahlgren, Handal, Szkudlarek, & Bayer, 2007). Although the project included participants from Sweden, Germany, Poland and Norway, we focus here on the Swedish results: the overall results showed several features that were specific to particular countries, and the authors can talk most authoritatively about the situation in Sweden. Both first-year and senior students were interviewed, 20 and 12 students respectively in each discipline, just under 100 students in each country. The information obtained was supplemented by documentation from the different programs. The project also included a longitudinal component, following students through the progress of their studies into the early years of their working life as novice professionals. The general purpose and overall design of the Journeymen project was to investigate the extent to which tertiary education provides adequate preparation for the demands of working life. The perspective taken was to look at the human dimension of the “human capital” issues from the viewpoint of a student. The project took into account not only what the impact of education might be on students, but also what the learners themselves make of that education. This viewpoint acknowledges the interplay between institutions of higher education and the students and teachers who populate them. In the project, participants were viewed as “journeymen” between the cultures of higher education and professional working life. Through their educational programs, students are becoming members of particular academic and professional cultures, and this fact has an influence on the nature of their learning. The Journeymen project aimed to develop understanding of the processes that shape the identity of students and novice professionals, to investigate the learning strategies that people use during this transition, and to explore their developing understanding of the nature of knowledge in their discipline. It sought to understand how higher education systems in different European countries prepare individuals for professional working life and to describe how they are received by employers and workplaces. In particular, there were a number of specific questions that the Journeymen project wanted to answer. How do students from different disciplines in universities in various European countries understand their university culture? How do they envisage work and the relationship between study and work? How do students and novice professionals conceive of themselves as professionals in their discipline? How do recent graduates view their university education, particularly as it relates to their future jobs? What contextual factors at university and in the workplace exert important influence on students? And is there a specific “European dimension” in the relationship between higher education and professional work? These defined the scope and formed the key research questions of the project. To summarise the overall results of the project, higher education programs that are oriented towards developing professionals (such as psychologists, political scientists or engineers) seem to produce a discipline-based identity among their students (Caçkowska et al., 2003; Karseth & Solbrekke, 2006), with notions of a professional role developed during the later, sometimes applied, parts of the

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studies (Johansson, Hård af Segerstad, Hult, Abrandt Dahlgren, & Dahlgren, 2008). In terms of disciplinary and professional knowledge, the structure of the studies is usually sequential rather than integrated (Dahlgren et al., 2005). However, this is dependent on the characteristics of the course organisation: the Swedish psychology program is built around a problem-based approach, wherein the organisation seems to support the integration of theory and practice throughout the degree, and thereby promotes the early development of students’ professional identity. At a more abstract level, the relationships between education and work found in the three Swedish programs can also be described using the constructs of ritual and rational (Abrandt Dahlgren, Hult, Dahlgren, Hård af Segerstad, & Johansson, 2006). Some educational programs include knowledge and skills that are ritual in character, that is, where the connection to a specific context of application is lacking, and the most important feature is that students are formally certified as having acquired that knowledge. For instance, think of the value of passing the traditional introductory statistics unit in many courses in psychology. On the other hand, it seems that all educational programs that prepare students for professional work include knowledge and skills that are rational in character, preparing students for a specific field of knowledge or profession and emphasising the utility value of knowledge. Such rational knowledge and skills can be divided into the rational substantive – content specific and contextually situated – and the rational generic – those that are developed through a variety of content and are transferable between different contexts. Different disciplines combine these aspects in different proportions, which has implications for how the professional knowledge of the discipline is viewed. Essentially, the framework sets out the epistemological basis of the particular discipline, and in particular, the balance between the ritual, rational substantive and rational generic aspects of the associated profession. The results from the Journeymen project show that this epistemological basis can be different in diverse professions, can vary between countries, even within the common framework of the European Union, and can be influenced by the pedagogical approach taken in the course of study, as in the problem-based approach in the Swedish psychology program. The Journeymen project started from a phenomenographic perspective investigating variation in students’ experiences of learning and work, both as individuals and as cohorts. However, as with the Professional Entity project, the analysis was then extended to a higher level to explicate the notions of ritual, rational substantive and rational generic approaches to disciplinary and professional knowledge. This was carried to a more abstract level using a discourse analysis approach (Gee, 1999) to compare different programs in the same country and the same programs in different national contexts. Chapter 4 gives a more detailed description of the Journeymen project, summarising the findings from the particular year and discipline cohorts, and investigating the students’ overall experience of the transition from university study to professional work – the ontological dimension – that are highlighted in the longitudinal aspects of the study.

Combining the Projects – Issues of Method

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Combining the Projects – Issues of Method The two projects described in the previous sections were carried out independently of each other. Each team had reported on specific and overall aspects of their projects, and it was through these reports – and, in particular, through two summaries presented by chance at the same conference – that we became aware that similar studies had been carried out half a world apart, in Australia and Europe. It seemed both reasonable and interesting to investigate the possibility of combining and extending our findings. A metaphor that we used was the notion of two different spotlights shining on the same area resulting in a clearer and more comprehensive illumination. The notion of re-use, re-analysis or secondary analysis of qualitative data has received some attention in the literature (Corti, Witzel, & Bishop, 2005; Kinzie et al., 2007), though most often in the case of classic sets of data being re-used for new investigations by new researchers. In that context, the usual recommendation is to use the derived or summarised results from the original studies rather than the actual original data (or transcripts), as the former retain the contextual information utilised by the original researchers. Indeed, original transcripts are very often not available at a later date, or to other researchers, for a variety of practical and ethical reasons. Weed (2005) describes a procedure for interpretive synthesis of qualitative research that he terms “meta-interpretation”. In our case, since the original researchers are involved in the re-analysis, we are able to use the original data (transcripts of interviews) as well as the derived summaries. We refer to our approach of combining, re-analysing and extending qualitative data from different research projects by the original researchers as “qualitative meta-analysis”. As opposed to the more usual (quantitative) meta-analysis, which aims to increase the validity or empirical support for a particular result or position, a qualitative meta-analysis aims to enrich previous analyses and enhance their credibility. A central issue of qualitative analyses concerns criteria of credibility and the efforts to enhance this by utilising different sorts of data and applying different methods of analysis. The former is often referred to as data triangulation, whereas the latter is denoted by methodological triangulation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Greene, Caracelli, & Graham, 1989). The purpose of our qualitative meta-analysis is to investigate the benefits of integrating the original categories from the independent component projects in order to arrive at more elaborate descriptions of the respective outcomes. Thus, we can add another aspect to triangulation whereby each research team views their own results in the light of the concept apparatus developed in the analysis by the other team, and this we refer to as “analyst triangulation” (Patton, 1999). Since the two projects were carried out independently, the questions developed for the interviews were slightly different, despite having the same overall focus. These differences provided alternate ways of investigating the related issues of learning at university and preparation for professional work. Following chapters will give more information on the specific questions and examples of students’ responses. However, one important point needs to be mentioned here. It is an

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unavoidable limitation of our international collaboration that the data were obtained from the Professional Entity project in English, while the data from the Journeymen project were in various European languages, and the specific data that we will be using were in Swedish. These questions and responses have been translated from Swedish to English, and despite careful discussion by the author team, this introduces an extra layer into the written words that we are using for our qualitative meta-analysis. At the most basic level, the findings of the two projects seemed to be quite distinct and yet complementary. Maybe the most important difference was that the extrinsic technical, extrinsic meaning and intrinsic meaning categories of the Professional Entity refer to individual students’ views of their discipline and their future profession, whereas the ritual, rational substantive and rational generic categories from the Journeymen project apply to individual disciplines as exemplified in specific university courses. There are various ways to proceed with a combination of results from the two projects. As an initial step, and to establish the utility of the combination, we applied the classification from each project to the material obtained from the other project. So, we examined the disciplines represented in the Professional Entity project using the ritual–rational schema of the Journeymen project, highlighting the role of individual professional disciplines in the learning process. In addition, we applied the aspects of the Professional Entity to individual students in the Journeymen project, making particular use of the longitudinal data as students progressed from junior to senior levels and thence to novice professionals. To assist us in our combined analyses we utilised a qualitative software program – NVivo (version 7, QSR International, 2007) – to enable us to keep track of the contents of selected transcripts. The four authors worked together during the analytic process. Firstly, we selected a number of representative transcripts for detailed study (and translated the Swedish ones into English). Then we individually (re-)read these transcripts to become completely familiar with the material selected from the primary projects. We then imported the transcripts into NVivo and coded them against the theoretical aspects, using a data projector so that we could all take part in the discussions surrounding the coding process. In this way, we were able to investigate the meaning of each section of the transcripts to clarify the evidence for various aspects of our analyses. Finally, we used the software to show us the analytic density of coding within each transcript and to collect utterances relating to specific aspects from each transcript. In an important way, the features of the software supported our thinking during this process of qualitative meta-analysis. In combination, the two projects turn a spotlight on the process of learning in higher education, one from the viewpoint of individual students, the other from the viewpoint of specific disciplines and archetypical students in each discipline. Appropriate learning environments can encourage students along the dimension from extrinsic technical to extrinsic meaning to intrinsic meaning by making explicit the role of particular technical components in professional skills, and the broader applicability of such skills in a professional and even personal context. From the discipline viewpoint, appropriate pedagogical approaches can allow the discipline profile to move along the dimension from ritual to rational substantive and

A Model for Understanding Professional Learning

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rational generic, for instance, by specifying curriculum that has numerous opportunities for addressing the rationale for including specific topics (particularly early in a course), for making explicit links to the profession, and for including the broadest and most transferable skills and knowledge. On the one hand, the Professional Entity helps us understand the ways in which individual students align their personal learning goals towards their profession. On the other hand, the Journeymen outcomes develop the idea of an archetypical student in a specific discipline which coheres with the attributes of a specific profession. We can see that the analyst triangulation provides support for the notion that higher education has an important role to play in the academic and working-life preparation of students. The two analyses combined provide evidence of an orthogonal relationship illuminating the nature of the professional practice at the core of tertiary pedagogy. Indeed, a second way to combine the results from the two projects is to develop a framework that integrates them into a single model. Such a model would include the viewpoints of individual students as well as the views from specific individual disciplines. We have carried out this broader process of combination and present the results in the following section.

A Model for Understanding Professional Learning Our model of professional learning at the interface between higher education and professional working life is based on the critical components identified in our qualitative meta-analysis of the Professional Entity and Journeymen projects. The model is shown in Fig. 2.1: it will be described in general terms here, and in more detail in future chapters. The horizontal dimension, derived from the results of the Professional Entity project, refers to views of learning for professional work. The vertical dimension is derived from the results of the Journeymen project and refers to views of knowledge for the profession. The space between these dimensions represents the idea of professional dispositions, such as creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity, that the expert students are developing and that they will make greater use of in their working life. The diagonal direction refers to concepts of identity as an experienced student and a novice professional, and to engagement with studies and profession. The model combines the two aspects of learning for professional work and knowledge in the specific discipline and profession, interacting in the notions of identity and engagement. In the chapters that follow, we will use quotes from the students who participated in the studies to illustrate certain ideas. The arrows in the diagram represent the inclusive nature of the hierarchy of categories. In the horizontal dimension, the narrowest conception of learning, discipline and the relationships between them, the extrinsic technical, is contained in the broader extrinsic meaning conception, which, in turn, is subsumed by the most expansive intrinsic meaning view. In the vertical dimension, the most limited ritual knowledge can be viewed as specific knowledge whose function has not (yet) been explained, and hence is contained in rational substantive knowledge, based in the

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Fig. 2.1 Model of professional learning

particular discipline; this, in its turn, is included in the notion of rational generic knowledge whose application is broader than the particular discipline. The diagonal line in our model denotes the increasing engagement with university studies and the professional role, and the development of concepts of identity as an experienced student and a novice professional. While our original studies provide the raw material for the horizontal and vertical dimensions in the model, the diagonal direction represents a distillation and combination of aspects of both studies. The categories obtained by this combination can be understood as a set of derived or second-order categories, construed by bringing about a new encounter between the original phenomenographic categories and the empirical materials. It is an interesting feature of phenomenographic studies, noticeable from the early examples but recently highlighted by Barnett (2007, p. 18) and others, that the broadest and most holistic categories often include an implicit or explicit recognition of the ontological aspect of learning – the being and becoming a professional in a particular field. So, for instance, the early studies of conceptions of learning describe the broadest conceptions as “seeing something in a different way” and “changing as a person”, as shown in this quote from a student: “I think any type of learning is going to have to change you . . . you learn to understand about people and the world about you and why things happen and therefore when you understand more of why they happen, it changes you” (Marton, Dall’Alba, & Beaty, 1993, pp. 291–292). The same ontological aspects are noticeable at the broadest levels in our own projects, and the combination of them produces the diagonal dimension that focuses on identity and engagement. The model can be applied to individual students or to discipline groups of students, both in terms of a snapshot at a particular time and in terms of development

Discussion

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over time. As educators, our preferred direction for development is to the right and downwards, and our preferred position for our students is in the bottom right of the diagram. This is both a value judgement and a consequence of the inclusive nature of both hierarchical dimensions. Holding broader conceptions of learning for work or knowledge for the profession gives students access to the whole range of conceptions to use as they need, whereas holding the narrowest conceptions limits them to those views alone. Early in their studies, students position themselves at different points in our model, and this is shown clearly in the empirical results from the Professional Entity and Journeymen projects. Various factors influence this positioning: the status and perception of the particular profession, the view of knowledge and associated pedagogic tradition in the profession, students’ individual conceptions of learning and perceptions of the discipline they have chosen for study, and their knowledge of the particular profession and its approach to professional work. These factors are likely to show differences between countries, and will certainly show variability between students. During the course of their studies, the pedagogic approach taken in their university courses will, to some extent, influence students to change their position on these two dimensions, though students with differing backgrounds and experience may react in different ways to the same pedagogy. So, for instance, “fixed factual” knowledge presented by a lecturer without argument or justification is likely to be experienced as ritual and confirm or even incline students towards an extrinsic technical view of the profession (for example, presentation of statistical techniques in a traditional “engineering statistics” course). This would also tend to correspond to a lower level of engagement with studies and is unlikely to help any development of professional identity. On the other hand, an educational program that links studies to work with authentic tasks may incline students to appreciate the rational generic aspects of discipline knowledge and to make the personal connection to their profession that is characteristic of the intrinsic meaning view (for example, a problem-based learning course in statistics for psychology). This would increase the level of engagement with studies and enhance the development of professional identity.

Discussion The model of professional learning presented above is based on the most important aspects of our combined empirical studies. Subsequent chapters will explicate the critical aspects of the model from our studies. But first, our model should be placed within broader professional learning frameworks. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Dahlgren et al. (2005) described four discourses in higher education: knowledge production as a joint enterprise between universities and the surrounding society; relationships between higher education and working life; contextualising the research on higher education within the experiences of the students; and the

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transition between higher education and working life. Our model strongly supports the second, third and fourth of these discourses and suggests an integration between them. In a sense, the model suggests a possible totality of student professional learning experience. However, the first discourse, knowledge production as a joint enterprise between universities and surrounding society, is only obliquely apparent. This is due to the focus of the model, which is on the experience of expert students rather than those responsible for curriculum design. This presents a challenge for lecturers, to design curriculum that takes account of the complexities found in the model and the forms of knowledge that are found outside the academy. Our proposed fifth discourse concerns students’ understanding of their future profession. The way the profession is represented becomes a part of students’ knowledge of the profession and contributes to their orientation for learning about the profession. A further challenge is suggested by the direction of components of the model. Barnett (2007) talks about the role of a student “in an age of uncertainty”, focusing on the ontological aspects of this role, and the notion of will to learn and authenticity of approach as a student. At the ends of the directional arrows in our diagram, on the right and the bottom, we come to a space where such ontological changes can occur. But what of students who may identify with ideas located at the beginning of the arrows? A possible solution here is to borrow from the characteristics of Wenger’s (1998) notions of how identity is formed in different communities. He suggests that identity is a “nexus of membership” and the development of a professional role is the process of moving from “legitimate peripheral participation” to full professional participation in a community of practice. Perhaps we can take comfort in recognising that students will fluidly move between model aspects as they become involved in different studies, work and social activity. However, teaching is a primary role in higher education, so pre-professional progression and learning cannot morally be left to happenstance. In Chapter 7 we will explore in detail how pedagogies can provoke students to experience an ontological change and to prepare them for the complexities of professional work. Billett (2001) points out that the affective domain also contributes to students’ ability to become part of a specific professional community. In our model, the affective domain is represented by the general background of professional dispositions as well as the diagonal line representing engagement and identity. In a different but related model, Reid and Solomonides (2007) discuss how a student’s potential profession contributes to their sense of being in the context of the discipline of design. In that diagram, the ontological position of the individual is placed at the centre, where the sense of being is combined with a sense of transformation (Who am I becoming?). Henkel (2005, p. 157) concurs and suggests that “identities are, first and foremost, shaped and reinforced in and by strong and stable communities and the social processes generated within them.” The model that we present here shows that there is, indeed, a strong relation between identity formation and the way in which students are aware of, and involve themselves with, professional knowledge and activity. Our model of professional learning identifies a (horizontal) dimension of views of learning for professional work and a (vertical) dimension of views of knowledge

Discussion

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for the profession. In addition, the space between them can be identified with the development of professional dispositions, to be investigated in further detail later. And crystallising from this, the diagonal dimension indicates the increasing engagement with studies and profession and focuses on aspects of identity as an expert student or novice professional. The model was created through particular evidence from Australia and Sweden, where the two component projects were carried out: the broader results from the Journeymen project incorporate viewpoints from four European countries. We wonder to what extent these dimensions depend on the specific national contexts. Sweden and Australia share pedagogical attitudes with expectations that our graduate students will contribute to our rather affluent democratic societies. Both nations have a relatively small population and have strong social security measures. Hence, the student groups that have contributed to our analysis have had some generic experiences that may well influence their understandings of professional work. We can only speculate what differences would be apparent from the viewpoint of other developed countries, such as Britain or the USA, and recognise that in newly developing countries such as Malaysia or China, or less developed countries in regions of the world such as Africa or South America, our model may require substantial modification. Our model represents the critical aspects of our combined studies. However, models do not explain everything. As we have just seen, our model is Eurocentric and may need adjustment for use in other national contexts. Similarly, individual student characteristics, such as ethnicity, gender and educational background, are not represented in the model. Studies undertaken by researchers in other contexts may well be able to contribute to components of the model and add dimensions that our data do not allow us to include. However, our model is reasonably robust given the method of analyst triangulation used in its creation. Rather than relying on separate analyses of our various studies, the intersections of the two programs have highlighted some distinctive areas that are worthy of further consideration. For instance, the vertical dimension highlights the way that knowledge is conceived of within different disciplinary contexts. This aspect of the model will be discussed in Chapter 4. Expert students’ and novice professionals’ views of their profession are teased out in the horizontal dimension, which is the focus of Chapter 3.

Chapter 3

Professional Discourse: How Do Novice Professionals See Themselves?

Introduction In this chapter we discuss the Professional Entity project in more detail and extend the results obtained from the study. This project gave us a means of exploring professional discourse from the perspectives of students. In a range of disciplines, including music, design, statistics, law and mathematics, we (and colleagues) have asked students how they view their discipline and their learning in that discipline, how they perceive their future profession, and how they see the relationship between future profession and current studies. While there has been significant disciplinary variation, there is also an interesting commonality. As we have seen in our previous summary, there is a range of views, some narrower or limiting and others broader or expansive. The most limiting view (which we have called extrinsic technical) sees the discipline, learning and profession in terms of technical components. A broader view (called extrinsic meaning) focuses on the discipline-specific artefacts – the actual music, the legal structures, the sets of data or the mathematical models. The most expansive view (which we have labelled intrinsic meaning) makes a strong personal connection with the discipline and the profession. These conceptions are hierarchical and inclusive (a feature inherited from the individual phenomenographic outcomes), meaning that a student who is aware of the broadest views is also able to access and use the more limited views when necessary – but not vice versa. Also important, the broadest views of profession tend to coexist with broadest views of learning in the discipline, and helping students see their profession in a broader way encourages them to a broader view of learning. Given the range of disciplines that we have studied, it seems possible to postulate similar relationships in a wider range of professions.

What Is Professional Discourse? Part of the problem of becoming a professional in any area is coming to know the culture and language of the profession. Some novice professionals may be anxious as they start to develop an appreciation of the complex relationships and activities A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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3 Professional Discourse: How Do Novice Professionals See Themselves?

of the new workplace. Others may simply slip into the new environment knowing what is going on and mapping their formally acquired knowledge and skills into those that are in use in the profession. These novice professionals now cannot be seen as students, nor as fully-fledged professionals. It is true that as expert students they would have knowledge and skills appropriate for the new profession and are prepared for employment, but they need something more – a willingness to continue learning in their new workspace. Johnsson and Hager (2008, p. 526) put it this way: Graduateness is more about committing to a form of lifelong learning that is relationally based, a critical part of graduates developing a fitness for professional practice and the persistence to emerge from the wilderness to becoming professional.

Here, the notion of lifelong learning is used as a means of articulating the transition from one form of academic learning to another of professional learning. The focus is on the fitness for purpose of the sorts of knowledge that are relevant in a particular professional workplace and people’s ability to re-think themselves as part of a new professional life. Hence, professional formation as a graduate implies a complex appreciation of one’s skills and self within a new cultural community. The professions are usually energetic participants in an environment where development and change are common practice and therefore actively assign to their members a large number of different roles. In this way, we can see a new profession (new that is, from the viewpoint of the novice professional) as a cultural community that accepts professional newcomers in a particular way. Although disciplinary skills are both a requirement of entry and form part of a practitioner’s contribution when joining a professional practice, learning here is much more about searching for connections to various forms of identity. At this particular stage of life, graduates are in search of occupational identities or even broader notions of social identity. (Johnsson & Hager, 2008, p. 532)

Novice professionals strive to match, integrate and change their understanding and actions within a new profession to fit in better with the new group. The use by a community of language that is recognisable as pertaining to that community involving intent, positioning, constitution, hegemony and so on is a critical element in understanding the genre of the new workplace. Bhatia (1991, p. 154) summarises the notion of genre as being a recognisable form of communication event, highly structured and conventionalised, and mutually understood by members of the community: “Genre defines, organises and finally communicates social reality . . . the text by itself is not a complete object possessing meaning on its own; it is to be regarded as an ongoing process of negotiation in the context of issues like social roles, group purposes, professional and organisational preference and prerequisites, and even cultural constraints.” Hence the novice professional needs to become a part of, participate in and appreciate the modes of discourse that are integral to their new workplace. Becoming part of a new profession involves an appreciation of one’s own possible relationship with others in the workplace. Salling Oleson (2001, p. 291) suggests that Work identity and professional identity are ways of apprehending [sic] meaning to work in general and to specific contents of the work – of course it reflects what the work

How Do Students Understand Professional Discourses?

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offers/demands – but it is primarily a subjective assigning of meaning. The subjective relation to the profession and to specific contexts of the job is grounded in a life history context, and therefore very individual. They are however not individual case stories – there are gender, generation and cultural relations interwoven with education system and labour market structures.

In the context of teachers as a professional group, Beijaard and colleagues propose that “teachers’ perceptions of their own professional identity affect their efficacy and professional development as well as their ability and willingness to cope with educational change and to implement innovations in their own teaching practice” (Beijaard, Verloop, & Vermunt, 2000, p. 750). In this example, we can observe that perceived professional identity is integrally entwined with an ability to act in and change within professional contexts. Our joint research provides a means of understanding the idea of “apprehending meaning to work in general” as the Professional Entity highlights qualitatively different ways in which expert students and novice professionals see and relate to their professions. As Salling Oleson (2001), Johnsson and Hager (2008) and Beijaard et al. (2000) have all observed, a novice professional’s new experience and development within a workplace is essentially a personal experience, but also a relational experience where the self is seen and positioned as an integral part of the profession. However, it is not possible to provide a hundred individual and different stories of the transition between formal studies and professional working life. Instead, we will discuss the commonalities between the experiences of such persons in transition through the presentation of a meta-analysis of expert (and some working) students’ perceptions of professional work from a variety of specific professional areas.

How Do Students Understand Professional Discourses? In this chapter, we look in depth at the component of our model that explores learning for work. This component highlights students’ perceptions of their future professional work in conjunction with the learning aspects that they see as important for their preparation as professional workers. There are three elements that comprise what we call the Professional Entity. While this chapter places a spotlight on this aspect of professional formation, the Professional Entity should be considered always as integral to the whole model (Fig. 3.1). In the model, we use the embracing term “learning for work” to acknowledge the forms of professional discourse that are found in the three aspects of the Professional Entity. To better appreciate how students understand professional discourse, we interviewed students in a range of disciplines about their perceptions of their future work. Participants from the professional areas of music, design, law, mathematics and statistics provided us with a picture of their possible futures. It is important to remember that although the participants were interviewed while still in formal studies, many were already working part-time in their professional fields and were therefore already developing an appreciation of the genre of their profession. Each of the component studies described in Chapter 2 has resulted in a phenomenographic

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Fig. 3.1 Model emphasising learning for work

description of students’ conceptions of a specific discipline and of learning in that discipline. The Professional Entity represents a combined analysis of the relationships between perceptions of professional work and conceptions of discipline and learning in a variety of discipline areas. In the background at the narrower levels are the important ontological concerns of becoming and being a professional, but at the broadest level these ontological concerns become explicit.

The Professional Entity The abstract notion of the Professional Entity is a meta-construct that provides a way of summarising students’ understanding of professional work and its relationship to their views of their disciplinary learning. Indeed, the choice of name implies an encompassing idea of entity – or “thing-ness”. The Professional Entity does not describe immutable concepts and practices, but rather a broad commonality of perceptions. While there is some variation in different disciplines, there seems to be a strong commonality in the broad outlines of this relationship, summarised as a hierarchy of conceptions at three levels or aspects. We will first present a specific disciplinary case that will emphasise some aspects of the Professional Entity, and then provide a table that highlights disciplinary variation within the meta-construct. As in many phenomenographic outcome spaces, the Professional Entity is hierarchically described to illustrate a range of perceptions from limiting to expansive, an idea that we discussed in Chapter 2. Simply put, if a student views their future profession in a limiting way, in the sense that they perceive the profession as being contained within specific boundaries and comprising specific

The Professional Entity

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techniques, then it is likely that when they are learning they focus mostly on the atomistic, technical components. In one sense, a limiting perception of future work is also related to a narrow approach to learning. Naturally, students will ensure that they learn the things that are most important to their particular view of their future professional work. Similarly, if students perceive their future work in broader ways, then they will approach their learning in a way that encompasses a broader range of options.

Examining the Professional Entity from the Context of One Profession – Music We will look first at the particular case of tertiary music students. Most of them work as musicians at the same time as they are studying, and many of them are also teaching private music lessons. In this way, they are involved with a profession in a way that gives them integrated experiences of learning and work. It may seem strange to investigate and discuss students’ perceptions of their future profession, as they might be thought to have little information or experience about this, particularly when they first begin their tertiary studies. However, this does not seem to be the case in twenty-first century higher education, particularly in music, where many students have concurrent (or even previous) work experience in the area in which they are studying, and indeed some of them may already be working professionally. Angus: If you stand every day with a trombone in your hand eventually you feel like you are a trombonist. . . . Sometimes you break it down into the smallest denominator possible. There’s a quick tune you break it down into, you know, really, really slow. You wouldn’t know anything about it and eventually speed it up and actually you can do it.

In this brief transcript extract, we can observe some of the characteristics of the first level of the Professional Entity. In this case, extrinsic and technical aspects of professional music-making are highlighted. Andrew identifies strongly with his tools of trade and describes how he disintegrates music into small manageable sections. There is no sense in this extract of seeing the music in any way other than the atomistic. When Angus spoke about professional work, he suggested that this technical approach would enable him to “nail it”. For a jazz musician, this expression means to be able to play specific musical phrases accurately. Angus focuses on his own contribution to the music making with the expectation that other musicians will notice his accurate approach to the score. Angus’ experience illustrates the extrinsic technical aspect of the Professional Entity in the context of professional music making. The extrinsic technical aspect describes elements of music making that are literally outside the participant. Music is understood as a combination of technical elements related either to an instrument or to musical notation. This tends to be associated with a technical focus in the teaching and learning of the instrument, as facility on the instrument is perceived to be fundamental to musical performance. The extrinsic technical aspect is constituted from an understanding that music is external to the player. Music is experienced as

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a series of technical and notational elements that are joined together physically on an instrument. The music and the instrument are therefore objects that are considered as external to the participants. Music is created through a physical act where instrumental or musicological components are prescribed by external forces rather than being interpreted or created from within the participants. A broader view of professional music making is described by the extrinsic meaning aspect of the Professional Entity. Here, the idea of professional work revolves around understanding and developing the meaning of the specific discipline objects that constitute the profession. Andrew: And so you approach it in an intelligent way and you can say, you know, what were their musical (pause), what was their music written for? What instruments were they written for? And did they have a liturgical function? Or was it simply performance music and all these sorts of questions. And you look at that and even down to things like the temperaments that instruments were that they played in and books that they wrote. And you ask why he wrote all these pieces in E minor which sound dreadful on the mean tone organs. There are various questions which interest me and they rise up and you look at them and you think about, then hope that by the time you come to play the music you’ve got some sort of deeper understanding of what it is doing and what it is that you’re playing.

The extrinsic meaning aspect describes a more integrated view of music making, where the focus is on the production of meaningful musical sound for communication. Instrumental and technical elements are incorporated into this aspect as a means of discovering the music’s meaning. But the focus is on the inherent meaning of the music described through the textual and stylistic elements. Communication of meaning is important in this aspect and is constituted through textual and technical elements. However, these elements are still in some ways external to the student. Andrew shows clearly how he examines the musical object – the score – carefully in order to portray accurately the meaning of that score with as much authenticity as possible. This way of approaching the professional components of work is qualitatively different from the extrinsic technical. From the extrinsic meaning perspective, students see that there is a form of richness in the things that constitute the profession, and their means of becoming part of that professional community is to concentrate their learning effort on the discovery of the meaningfulness of the professional object. However, some students describe an even broader way of understanding what their professional work will be (or is) like. Students holding this view perceive that their future professional work is related to their own personal and professional being in an essential way. Students will characteristically take a personal approach to their discipline and actively integrate their learning with other aspects of their life. Hence, at the broadest intrinsic meaning aspect of the Professional Entity, there is an explicit ontological character to work and study. If we take an example from an expert music student we can see how this way of thinking is manifest. Fiona: There is so much to learn about what there already is. . . . You have to learn all there is to learn and then you can experiment. Just a general description would be to know the skills. Let’s take an example, say a first movement of a Mozart Sonata, to be able to learn the skills to be able to play all the notes correctly, to have learned (pause) I think within that learning comes a knowledge of the composer, period and the harmony of the piece and all that is involved with the music, the interpretation. If you have learned all that then you


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come to a performance and on top of all that there is something deep inside that you have to also learn.

In this extract, Fiona first describes the importance of the technical elements, then the object meaningfulness, and then her own relation to these elements. It is this personal relationship to the professional objects and activity that makes the intrinsic meaning aspect of the Professional Entity different from the other aspects. This view of music includes the extrinsic elements of instrumental technique and inherent musical meaning but incorporates them within a broader framework of personal interpretation and meaning. The focus of this aspect is on the relations between personal understanding, or aesthetic, of the world of music and the consequent personal re-interpretation of it through a communicative process. The external meaning of music is re-interpreted as internal while the mechanics of playing the instrument are subsumed in the interpretive aspects. Music becomes a demonstration of personal meaning. Students’ perceptions of professional work, then, represent the ground from which they are aware of the importance of their current learning situation. The idea of “what is music (or law, or political science)?” becomes central to the participants’ understanding of learning music. At one extreme, those who consider that music is simply what the instrument produces technically can only approach their understanding of learning and teaching from this view. At the other extreme, those who consider music to be the discovery of meaning will approach learning and teaching music with a sense of personal adventure and discovery. The examples presented from the context of pre-professional musicians provide a view of professional work from one specific professional area. In our examination of different professions, we have come to the conclusion that while the Professional Entity can be seen as a meta-concept of professional work, there is also disciplinary variation within it.

The Effect of Disciplinary Variation If we look at different disciplines and the Professional Entity, we can see that while the broad entity descriptor is relatively constant, there are some specific differences of meaning within each aspect which are defined by the discipline. Our research in law, mathematics, statistics and design (from the Australian studies) and our reevaluation of the discipline areas involved in the Journeymen studies (from Sweden) lead us to postulate that while the specific detail of the nature of the Professional Entity is different in each domain, there is also an underlying stability about the perception of professional work that is related to students’ conceptions of learning. Thus, the Professional Entity is an over-arching framework that relates students’ and teachers’ understanding of their subject and their perceptions of professional work in their area. Its identification enables an interdisciplinary approach to the learning and teaching that is a preparation for professional work in most professional areas. In Table 3.1 we provide a description of how students understand the various professional areas and the consequent focus of their learning.

Design

Focus on skills: design is concerned with being able to apply skills appropriately, about actually doing something. Learning in design is about developing skills, acquiring knowledge and remembering techniques so that the appropriate ones can be selected in any specific design context. This can involve applying and experimenting with different techniques

Music

Focus on techniques: music consists of technical aspects and discrete musical elements, and written music is seen as a series of technical problems that have to be individually solved. Learning is about acquiring these techniques and elements by copying what teachers demonstrate, primarily by breaking skills down to their smallest components and then combining them into musical technique, demonstrated in examinations and performances Focus on rules: the discipline of law is a collection of rules and regulations that need to be imparted or applied in various contexts. Learning in law consists of acquiring items in order that they can be applied in such a way (including acquiring a law degree itself)

Law Focus on techniques/components: mathematics and statistics consist of individual techniques and components, and students focus their attention on disparate mathematical and statistical activities including the notion of calculation (interpreted in the widest sense). Learning consists of doing required activities, collecting methods and information, in order to do well in assessments, examinations or future jobs

Mathematics and statistics

Table 3.1 The Professional Entity, discipline orientations

Extrinsic technical: professional work is constituted as a group of technical components that can be utilised when the work situation requires it

Professional entity

42 3 Professional Discourse: How Do Novice Professionals See Themselves?

Design

Focus on interpreting: design is concerned with meeting the needs of society, about interpreting the requirements that people have for designed products. Design is understood to be about doing something to solve a problem, and particularly the problem faced by the client. Learning in design consists of becoming part of the design community, focusing on the social and team aspects of the design process

Music

Focus on musical meaning: music comprises the various meanings found within the written musical text and its stylistic and historical context. Learning is about discovering such meaning within the music, usually by reflecting on and adapting the teacher’s advice about stylistic interpretation, and integrating this advice with other musical sources (such as recordings) Focus on the legal system: law is a dynamic system of rules and regulations that needs to be interpreted and facilitated, and that can be used to maintain the status quo or to provide a framework to change society. Learning in law is about acquiring the appropriate legal context and skills, and using them to interpret and even critique the legal system

Law

Table 3.1 (continued)

Focus on models and data: mathematics and statistics consist of models of some aspect of reality. Students focus their attention on setting up such models of a specific situation (a production line, a financial process), maybe based on data in the statistical case, or a universal principle (the law of gravity). Learning is about applying mathematical or statistical methods, linking theory and practice, to understand these disciplines and the areas where they are applied


Extrinsic meaning: professional work focuses on developing the meaning inherent in discipline objects

Professional entity

The Professional Entity 43

Design

Focus on self expression: design is concerned with communicating, understanding people and the impact that one’s designs have on people. Learning in design is understood to be a process of self discovery focusing on self expression, reflection and integration

Music

Focus on communicating personal meanings: music is about communication, the meaning inherent in the written music and including the personal meaning of the music for the performer. Learning is about reflecting on the musical and personal meaning of a piece and discovering ways to communicate these meanings to an audience through a performance Focus on self: law is an extension of self, a way of thinking and living, a dynamic system with which students are actively involved and able to change using reflection. Learning in law is about realising one’s full potential and using this to change one’s own life and to make a difference to one’s clients’ lives

Law

Table 3.1 (continued)

Focus on life: mathematics and statistics are an approach to life, a way of thinking, an inclusive tool to make sense of the world, and students make a strong personal connection with their own lives. Learning is about developing mathematical and statistical ways of thinking, using this to change one’s view of the world and satisfying one’s intellectual curiosity


Intrinsic meaning: professional work is essentially related to a person’s own personal and professional being

Professional entity

44 3 Professional Discourse: How Do Novice Professionals See Themselves?


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We have shown how the examples from music shed light on the Professional Entity. However, while the Professional Entity is a meta-construct that enables us to understand the importance of students’ perceptions of their future work for learning, there are some aspects of disciplinary variation that are worth noting. The variation we are talking about is based on different professions’ ways of interpreting their professional role. This is an important consideration in that while the broad component parts of the Professional Entity provide a means for teachers and students to focus their attention on working life in conjunction with studies, professional variation is a way of contextualising the notion of the Professional Entity for specific professional groups. In this sense, the specific discourse or genre of the profession is made evident. Looking at the law column in the table will show that legal students focus on aspects of the profession that are typically “lawyer-ish”. So, students’ understanding of law as a profession comprises a content view where law is seen as a collection of rules and regulations; a sociological view where law is seen as a dynamic system; and a personal view where law is seen as an extension of self. One student describes the content view (extrinsic technical) in the following way: Jason: My ideal job would require not too much legal research, I wouldn’t want to be in the role of constantly looking up criminal legal textbooks and searching rules for legal technicalities and things like that, I’d more like to emphasise working with clients, kind of discussing legal issues, like simple legal issues with them, more kind of advocacy I think, rather than working as a paralegal kind of position where you’re kind of, it’s not that I don’t like doing research, I think it’s just, the more rewarding part of the job is just dealing with clients and then imparting on them the knowledge that you know and it’s, it’s not fun having to go ‘I’ll just have to get back to you on this legal rule, just go away, I’ll look this up and come back.’

We can see that Jason imagines that though he will be working with clients, his role is that of knower. It is his job to impart his legal knowledge to his clients. He indicates that it is not sufficient to know where to find the knowledge, but that he has to have it all at his fingertips. In an air of despair, he suggests that he finds the process and acquisition of legal rules a bit daunting and suggests an alternate career. In contrast to the content view, other students suggest that working as a legal professional inclines them to be part of a dynamic system that has the potential to change society or enable the law to be changed by society. In this sociological view (extrinsic meaning) we can see that students find the concept of legal work important and recognise that they are a part of that dynamic social system. Jacinta: Law is about the whole notion of helping people and then also being able to transform society slowly, it’s a slow process, so that people are then able to help themselves. I think that’s what the study of law is about.

The intrinsic meaning aspect manifests as a more personal view of the discipline, wherein law becomes an extension of self. An element of this is a heightened sense of self-reflection in which rules and systems are used to inform a personal reflective stance whereby the person can have a distinct, intrinsic and ethically consistent approach to law. This view extends beyond the sociological view, as people see

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that they are able to make changes in the system rather than simply interpreting or facilitating the system. Saskia: And I think with law, at least if you are doing, if you put effort into learning and if you are interested in learning, you’ll start to think in a different way, and it is not actually something that you can switch on and switch off for example, it changes what you value.

Examining Swedish transcript material from the Journeymen project we find that pre-professional students of psychology also enter into discourses surrounding their perceptions of professional work. We can then use the construct of the Professional Entity as a lens to interpret expert students’ and novice professionals’ experience of learning for work. We interviewed Erika towards the end of her degree in psychology at Linköping University. When talking about learning for the profession, Erika initially discussed the technical aspects of her studies, such as how treat a person who is clinically depressed. This seems to indicate an extrinsic technical approach to learning for work. However, a closer reading of the transcript revealed that she often went beyond this to discuss the meaning of the psychological jobs that she was undertaking – showing the extrinsic meaning aspect of the Professional Entity, as the following quotation illustrates: Erika: I am not always sure that if you give someone a diagnosis, well sometimes it can lead to that person getting a better, more financial support, better chances of getting an education and so on, but it could also mean a stigma that will follow this person their entire life, which can make things more difficult when they apply for a job, or want to have children or whatever. So there are many steps, and you have to think ahead for everything you write in patient records, when testing and everything, I think. That you really check the use of what you do before you do it. What is my testing going to be used for, what is the knowledge I am bringing going to be used for?

She also made comments indicating that she was aware of a strong personal connection between her studies and professional work which could be categorised as an intrinsic meaning approach to learning for work: “It has been kind of extraordinary, because it is so much that is focused on getting to know yourself, and to connect the knowledge you get to your personal self all the time.” We will hear more from Erika in Chapter 6 in the context of identity development. From these different professional areas we find that there is a discourse surrounding pre-professional engagement with the profession. The evidence, represented by the quotations used from our participants, shows that each profession can be perceived in ways that suggest the narrowest extrinsic technical, the broader extrinsic meaning or the broadest intrinsic meaning aspects. Each of these perspectives inclines people to different forms of participation within their formal studies and their early professional work. In one sense, their description of their experiences demonstrates aspects of professional discourse where they may position themselves on the edge of the profession, or as full members of that profession.

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Professional Discourses and Learning The evidence presented regarding students’ perceptions of work and the relation that this has to learning extends the research findings of Prosser and Trigwell (1999), Kember (1997) and Biggs (1999), who established that there is a relation between students’ perceptions of their learning situation and the ways in which they then go about their learning. Other studies have linked this with students’ ideas about their subject (e.g., Entwistle & Marton, 1994; Crawford, Gordon, Nicholas, & Prosser, 1994; Petocz & Reid, 2001; Bruce et al., 2006). In each case, the perception of the situation and the subject area incline students to adopt different sorts of approaches to their studying. From the edges of another professional domain – the health profession – Schröder, Wilde Larsson and Ahlström (2007), have noted that relatives of patients experience professional care in different sorts of ways. Combining these findings provides us with an inkling of how people experience being on the periphery of a profession – involved, interested, but not fully a part of it. Our students, looking into the profession from the student world, must be experiencing something similar. Our research has also shown that there is a relation between students’ perceptions of their future work and the way they go about learning, and that this perception of work may be generic across disciplines. This seems to be an important idea – that there are generic aspects of developing professionalism, and also domain-specific aspects. Expert students are involved in a discourse that positions them wholly within a pre-professional domain. Within this domain they focus on learning, relationships with other students and teachers, knowledge formed and expressed within the academy and anticipations for their future. All of these aspects are negotiated from within a world focused on learning. However, the recently-qualified professional new to the field focuses on the nature of the work itself. In that sense, the individual expert learner becomes a novice on the edge of a professional discourse. The essential difference between these situations is that in a formal learning domain it is the student and the learning that are important, whereas in the new profession it is the quality of work and the workers’ relationship with the team that becomes important. Reid (1997) first articulated this relation in her work with musicians and their students when describing the Music Entity, a construct that was specific to the discipline of music. The identification of the Professional Entity as a more general experience of the professional world that is related to teaching and learning suggests that the constitution of categories of description of phenomena in future studies could be reconsidered. This reconsideration would reflect the relation of the group’s experience of the professional world and the relationship that an awareness of this world may have with teaching and learning in associated disciplines. In her study of recent mathematics graduates (that is, students who studied the mathematical sciences at university and who are now working with some form of mathematics within diverse professional areas), Wood (2006) found evidence suggesting that many graduates felt themselves ill prepared by formal study for the

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exigencies of work. Angie and Leah, two of the participants in her study expressed this viewpoint: Angie: I’ve got the skills. Given the opportunity I’m more than capable of doing the job. However, having the piece of paper itself hasn’t helped me get a job. So, that’s a negative problem. Once I get the job I’ve got plenty of theory and knowledge and skills to go ahead and do it but it has been a very real hurdle trying to get the position. Leah: I don’t think that my studies prepared me for a subsequent career in statistics at all well. As a matter of fact I think it was very poor and I think it had . . . my getting this job here had a lot more to do with me just using my initiative than having anything . . . than applying anything I’ve learnt at university . . . it’s actually really easy to see areas in industry where you think you could make a difference, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get past that recruitment filter and to actually find yourself in one of those jobs (p. 85).

Wood’s results provide us with a bit of a conundrum. In one sense, the Professional Entity is a key that enables us to interpret student discourse relating to their expectations of learning for work. However, if a teacher’s experience of professional work is oriented around the extrinsic technical, then that is what will become the focus of learning and teaching activity in formal situations. Of course, the same may be said for the intrinsic meaning aspect. Yet, Wood’s recent graduates found it very difficult to reconcile the confidence they had in formal learning with the uneasiness they had in initial work contexts. This discussion moves us as educators to think of the enormous complexity of approaches to knowledge and learning that comprise our students’ experience. Nyström (2009) represents the transition from formal studies into working life as a “trajectory” . This theoretical concept indicates that the movement from education to working life is not self-evident, but a course that can be influenced by a number of factors. The participants in her longitudinal study were able to re-consider their formal learning in the light of their new professional lives. As well as suggesting a sense of excitement in the transition, Nyström also highlights the issue of gender as an issue of professional discourse: One aspect of the transition from higher education to working life is how the working life novices acquire legitimacy and position themselves as professionals. . . . When the novices do gender they also produce and reproduce a gendered notion of what it means to be a professional individual. This has an influence on their professional practice; an influence that . . . cuts across different educational programs and professional contexts, affecting how they position themselves as a professional person with specific knowledge and competence (paper 3, p. 1).

In this sense, Nyström suggests that part of the meaningfulness of work comprises a notion of a gendered self and that this plays a significant role in the novice professionals’ interactions with others within the new professional community. While the Professional Entity provides us with a means of negotiating professional discourses at various levels, it does not explicate the importance of gender to those negotiations. Similarly, the Professional Entity does not identify specific cultural relationships with learning for work despite the participants in the study having a range of different educational, religious and national backgrounds. An appreciation

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of professional discourses, however, should not neglect these important personal stories but should rather expect that these, sometimes tacit, experiences are also part of expert students’ and novice professionals’ experience of learning for work. In our model, these complexities may be interpreted as professional dispositions and will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

Professional Discourse and Knowledge In this chapter, we have examined expert students’ perceptions of professional work and what it takes to learn to prepare for this sort of work. We have tried to include a variety of views from students within the academy, from the voice of research resulting in the identification of the Professional Entity, and from the perspective of diversity developed from a disciplinary viewpoint. What seems critical is that some forms of knowledge are seen by expert students and novice professionals as fit for different purposes. Some knowledge and interactions seem suitable for the context of formal studies, some seem suitable for the new profession. It is essential that the student professionals are able to continually rethink their position within the new profession. This rethinking involves the relation of knowledge and action. The focus is on the fitness for purpose of the sort of knowledge that is relevant in a particular professional workplace and people’s ability to keep on re-thinking themselves as part of a new professional life. Hence professional formation as a graduate implies a complex appreciation of one’s skills and self within a new cultural community. This chapter however, has not discussed the nature of disciplinary knowledge and the way in which that influences students’ perceptions of the profession. For instance, Ashley, a law student, describes an extrinsic technical view of the profession when he says “as in the general rules that you will follow” in the following quotation. But the quotation also shows a particular way of seeing the knowledge base of law: Ashley: To me rules and regulations are the black and white bits of the law, more the ‘this is a case, this is the principle to follow, just follow it’, type of rules and regulations. I look at it from that perspective, just as in the general rules that you will follow, like if you are given a hypothetical situation, the rules and regulations are the ones that ‘that’s that, that’s the rule and that’s the precedent’ type of thing.

Here we see a very clear view of legal knowledge, and a consequent way of acting as a lawyer in the future. A different perspective of the profession and knowledge in the profession is found in this quote: Charbel: I think law impacts on many areas of like, you know economic, it’s (pause) I see it myself more in a social way, but it impacts on economic, commercial, government, it really impacts in our everyday lives, so in a way I think that a law degree is really imperative. I mean it’s so important just in terms of property transactions and insurance, and it’s sort of like a general knowledge course in a way, so, but for myself personally I see as a social thing, achieving justice for people.

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Charbel goes on to present a rational view of legal knowledge: . . . It’s sort of like a jigsaw puzzle and then you are putting in the pieces and it’s all becoming a bit clearer. Whereas before I really felt like I had all these little bits of information in my head and I couldn’t actually put it together. I think as you go further and further it sort of comes more together and you sort of, you know, you get it more. I mean you will never fully understand why they came to those decisions, like there are many gaps in the law, but you do reach a deeper understanding of why they, why they come to those decisions, why certain laws were made and things like that.

In the chapter that follows, we will explore in close detail the nature of knowledge for the professions.

Chapter 4

Professional Knowledge: What Does Knowledge Mean to Novice Professionals?

Introduction Expert students experience knowledge in different ways. Professions have a particular influence on the character of knowledge, and each area of professional knowledge has a characteristic epistemology that becomes apparent in formal university courses and which is then experienced by students. The results of the Journeymen project delineate distinct differences in students’ views of the nature and use of knowledge in different discipline areas. These differences can be described by saying that students experience the knowledge base in a particular educational program in a ritual or a rational way. As this chapter progresses, we will examine in depth why these descriptions help us understand the characteristics of knowledge in a professional discipline area; but first we recall what we mean by these terms. Educational programs may include knowledge and skills that are ritual in character – whose reason for inclusion is opaque to students (and maybe not even understood by novice professionals). By ritual we mean knowledge that is included to satisfy formal requirements, or an established code of practice or customary procedures, but is not presented with any clear rationale for its inclusion. A good example is the traditional introductory course in statistics (sometimes called a “service” statistics course) in many disciplines such as engineering and psychology. Students may not appreciate the extent to which statistics is of value to their future profession, but they know that they have to pass the course to progress, and they know that it will be difficult! Having passed the course, they will feel that they are closer to their future profession in a formal way. At the same time, programs may also include knowledge and skills that are rational in character – whose reason for inclusion is clear to students, and is thought through or reasoned. Knowledge that is rational has two, related ways in which it can be understood with regard to future professional work. Rational substantive knowledge or skills are those that may be used in working life in the same way as they were acquired in the study program: a good example would be knowledge about specific materials – say wooden beams – that might be used in an engineering construction project. On the other hand, rational generic skills are A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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4 Professional Knowledge: What Does Knowledge Mean to Novice Professionals?

context and content-independent skills that may be used in a variety of situations, for instance, the communication skills involved in preparing and presenting a report of an engineering investigation to a tutor or a client. Different disciplines and different ways of presenting disciplines, combine these aspects in different proportions. Indeed, different ways of presenting the same knowledge (and different views of the same knowledge by teachers) can emphasise the ritual or the rational aspects (Palmer & Marra, 2004). For instance, many teachers of modern introductory statistics courses in engineering or psychology go to great pains to explain the rationale behind their inclusion in the course, turning what may have been seen as ritual into what is hopefully seen as rational. However, the characteristic ways in which knowledge is presented in a particular course and a particular discipline have implications for the way that professional knowledge is viewed by students and novice professionals. Expert students’ experience of knowledge makes a significant contribution to the way in which they make the transition from formal studies into working life. Another aspect of the knowledge met during a course of study is its congruence with subsequent professional work. In general terms, and based on empirical observations, the transition from higher education to working life can be described as either discontinuity, continuity or recontextualisation. Some people find little relation between their university studies and their new world of work: rather, they report experiencing entirely new situations where they face new kinds of tasks which seem unrelated to their experiences as students. In such a case, the transition is seen as a form of discontinuity, and the novice professionals must start learning again in order to take on work tasks. Other people find that the form of knowledge presented in higher education is similar to that which is presented in working life. Then the transition is seen as a matter of continuity, and novice professionals report that work tasks seem familiar. This continuity and familiarity is found even though the social and material contexts encountered in working life may differ a lot from those in higher education. There is a third possibility, where novice professionals see the transition from studies to working life as incorporating a recontextualisation of their formal knowledge. They report that they seem able to use their previously acquired generic knowledge and skills and can transform these to cope with the kinds of problems and tasks that working life offers. In this chapter, we use empirical evidence based on the experiences of expert students and novice professionals to explore how they understand disciplinary knowledge and how they see this knowledge as they make the transition into working life. Thus, we are focusing on the vertical dimension of our model of professional learning, as we show in Fig. 4.1. The empirical context for this exploration is the Journeymen project, which focuses on the transition from higher education to working life in three different study programs at Linköping University: political science, psychology and mechanical engineering. The results reported constitute part of a comprehensive research project carried out by four research teams from Sweden, Norway, Germany and Poland (Dahlgren et al., 2007). We make particular use of the Swedish material, collected by the team at Linköping University (Abrandt Dahlgren et al., 2006). To provide a background for the knowledge claims made

Ideas Regarding Disciplines and Transitions

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Fig. 4.1 Model emphasising knowledge for the profession

from the Journeymen project, we also include discussion of a previous research project on cultural differences regarding knowledge and learning between working life and higher education (Dahlgren & Pramling, 1985), a precursor to the Journeymen project, as well as material from other published sources.

Ideas Regarding Disciplines and Transitions Disciplines in higher education have a variety of different ways in which knowledge is understood and presented. These differences have been the subject of research for many decades, from the classic idea of the “two cultures” (Snow, 1964). Student learning is subject to a range of different influences: students’ social background, their own ontological perspectives and their epistemological standpoints all have a role to play in their overall learning approach. The design and delivery of individual subjects and whole university courses also influences students’ learning processes (Abrandt Dahlgren, 2000, 2003; Abrandt Dahlgren & Dahlgren, 2003). The academy recognises distinctions between different fields of study: Becher (1989) suggested that they can be referred to as hard-pure, soft-pure, hard-applied and soft-applied fields of study. He and his collaborators (Neumann, Parry, & Becher, 2002) built on this to explore how these categories can be used to understand specific disciplines and the relationships between them. Some of these differences pertain to the university-level aspects such as curriculum design, assessment protocols and cognitive purpose. Other differences are rather more specific, related to the characteristics of teachers, their teaching methods, their conceptions of student learning and their assessment requirements. Characteristics of the discipline, the teachers’ experience and the students’ learning combine to create a view of

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knowledge in a particular discipline. It is this disciplinary and contextual view of learning professional knowledge that is the subject of our investigations. Previous research has not attended to the complexities of the outcome of university programs in terms of how graduates construe themselves as professionals, or how they experience the transition to the socio-cultural contexts of working life. In this chapter, we will explore how our expert students experienced knowledge within their particular discipline area, and how they viewed this knowledge in the transition to professional working life. The relationship between tertiary studies and professional work is an area of research that has attracted increasing interest among researchers in recent years. In a review of research on the transition from higher education to working life, Brennan et al. (1996) identified that research has predominantly focused on the systems level, on the match between the output of higher education and the demands for academically-trained workers in society, or studied the expediency of higher education as assessed retroactively by professional novices. They argue that the transition is often described in rather general categories and there is little concern with the way that the impact of education is experienced by the students who are becoming professionals, or with specific work task requirements. In a later review of the field, Johnston (2003) observes that there is little researchbased information regarding graduate employment from the graduates’ perspective. She suggests that there is a real need to undertake research that focuses on the experiences of early-career graduates (such as the novice professionals who are the focus of this chapter). She points out the lack of research on working conditions and culture, the relationships between higher education and work, and fulfilment issues such as the nature and extent of the graduates’ job expectations, satisfaction and commitment. There is also a dearth of information regarding the relationships between graduates’ expectations of working life and their employers’ explicit expectations of them. Wood (2006) concurs in this belief, based on a series of interviews with recent mathematics graduates in the workforce. Many mathematics graduates in the workforce found it quite difficult to reconcile the character of knowledge from university study with the exigencies of working life. Novice mathematics professionals spoke about a disjunction between the mathematical knowledge they had studied at university and the mathematics that was required in the workplace. In some cases, the novice professionals suggested that their employers simply did not know what they could do as mathematicians. Quite simply, many of them felt unprepared by university for work, with a lack of useful skills and an inability to relate conceptual knowledge to work requirements. More recently Nyström (2009, p. 56) provided specific information regarding this transition. Using information from her student and graduate participants, she defined five stages of transition: reflection regarding their completion of formal studies, attention paid to work and world realities, attention to personal professional practices, attention to personal abilities, and reflection regarding their overall career choices. A problem for institutions as a whole, and for individual students, is the lack of real knowledge about the expectations and requirements of particular professions.

Students and Novice Professionals’ Conceptions of Knowledge: An Early Study

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We wonder how closely study programs prepare students for a particular form of working. Barnett (1994, 2000a) commented on the lack of stable forecasts about qualifications needed for professional work and the nature of future tasks in working life. In this context, the focus has turned towards developing students’ generic capabilities, recognising that in many cases specific knowledge is not enough. In a Swedish state survey (SOU, 2001, p. 13), it was argued that qualified workers in contemporary working life require a perspective on competence that includes specific knowledge and skills, as well as more generic abilities of independent learning, and formulating and solving problems. Symes and MacIntyre (2000) suggest that generic capabilities and skills could become the focus of pedagogies that include an emphasis on transferable skills, competency formation, modularisation, student profiling and the development of reflective practice. As can been seen by this quick survey of the field, becoming a professional includes engagement in a wider set of discourses, such as the institutional presentation of knowledge, the characteristics of the specific discipline, and knowledge of self. This represents a responsibility for novice professionals, who may need to move beyond the limits of their specific job to consider and reflect upon their own conceptualisation of professional knowledge and to see their first job as a component of their own trajectory from expert student to professional.

Students and Novice Professionals’ Conceptions of Knowledge: An Early Study The question of how knowledge is conceptualised by students is a central one, particularly if we regard conceptions of knowledge as being formed (at least in part) through education. In a study by Dahlgren and Pramling (1985), students from engineering, business and medicine were interviewed at the beginning of their studies and anew after 3 years to explore the question “What do you actually mean by knowledge?” The answers to this question revealed different flavours, primarily regarding the relationship between theoretical knowledge and reality. One group of answers either did not link knowledge and reality at all, or made a clear distinction between them. The authors labelled this conception separatist. One brief example is from a student of business studies: At the present level it is theoretical knowledge.

A second group of students dealt explicitly with the relationship between knowledge and reality by pointing out that academic knowledge can be transformed to become a basis for real-world action. The authors called this a sequential conception. An engineering student put it this way: Knowledge, that must be to be able to put theory into practice, I don’t need to know the theory, in my opinion, because I can look it up in a book and I can ask other people about it. But, sort of, knowledge in itself is how I can turn the text into action, in principle. This is what I’m going to try to learn. All the formulae one sort of knows by heart at the time but it is the ability to find information and then put it into practice, that’s knowledge.

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In a third group of students, there was no need to disentangle this relationship because the knowledge is knowledge about reality. This was referred to as an integrated conception: Knowledge is being able to make one’s way in life and being able to understand what is happening around one . . . , by going through life with one’s eyes open and learning from one’s surroundings how things work and other people’s views of things.

Another group of students was interviewed just as they were about to enter working life and then 1 year later. There were some disciplinary differences between their changing views of the nature of knowledge. The neophyte engineers and business administrators pointed out aspects of inadequate preparation for their profession, the former complaining that the majority of the examples they had studied were artificial, the latter finding much of their acquired knowledge irrelevant. The doctors also commented on shortcomings in their formal education, but they appreciated the diversity of diagnostic methods that they had learned. Their professional experience allowed them to establish the utility of many of the things they had learned as students. Two decades later, Wood (2006) also emphasised this need for recent graduates to reconsider their education in the light of professional work. However, Dahlgren and Pramling’s study with new graduates showed the importance of early working experiences in specific professions that incline students towards a new appreciation of knowledge that they had learned previously. It is interesting to note that their analysis provides a view of knowledge and transition that is related to the individual’s experience rather than making any claim regarding the nature of the specific professional area to which the student belongs. Dahlgren and Pramling’s research indicates that novice professionals appear to have fairly advanced conceptions of the phenomenon of knowledge as it is experienced in the workplace. Only a minority seems to preserve the more naive idea that knowledge consists of a mass of memorised facts without any relationship to the real world. However, the more philosophical conception of knowledge as an attitude towards the surrounding world gradually weakens in favour of a more entrepreneurial notion that knowledge has to be oriented towards action and decision. A general impression is that the initial confrontation with professional life has qualitatively different effects for novice professionals. It seems that the problems faced by novice professionals can be traced back to the breadth and structure of their education. A critical question is whether or not to incorporate in the curriculum elements corresponding to professional tasks, since so many recent graduates have suggested that there is a disjunction between what is favoured at work and what is focused on as critical knowledge in formal study. This review of the field leads us to conclude that there are obvious differences between knowledge as it is constructed in the academy, and the use and reconstruction of knowledge in the context of professional work. In the sections that follow, we explore the whole sequence of transition into working life: firstly, students’ experience of disciplinary knowledge; secondly, their initial experiences of working life; and finally their reflection on the process of movement from one to the other.

The Journeymen Project

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Expert students move into professional fields with strongly-developed ideas about the nature of knowledge and the character of the profession. At this stage, knowledge can be rather theoretical despite universities’ current focus on authentic forms of learning and assessment. As novice professionals, they come to appreciate the complexity and demands of work and to reconsider the role that disciplinary knowledge now plays for them. An iterative dialectic is established. In the section that follows, we look a little more closely at how knowledge is perceived within different disciplinary areas and how this knowledge is then changed to a form of knowledge-in-action for the new professional area.

The Journeymen Project The Journeymen project investigated knowledge formation and the transition from formal studies to working life from the perspective of senior students and novice professionals in three different academic contexts: political science, psychology, and mechanical engineering. These three programs can be seen as representative of a broad variety of knowledge traditions and cultures, from the classical liberal arts program, with its loose structure and generic employment prospects, to professional programs in which a particular profession is clearly defined as the intended outcome. The participants in this project were regarded as “journeymen”, people who have served their apprenticeship, as expert students, but who are still novice, rather than fully experienced, professionals. The transition from higher education to working life can be viewed as a trajectory from one community within academia, with a particular set of boundaries and traditions, to another community of practice within working life, with a different location, boundaries, activities and traditions (Wenger, 1998). Such a trajectory or movement over time does not necessarily follow a predestined course, but is open to interaction with and influence from a multitude of sources. A central source of knowledge formation in any community of practice is participation; knowledge is constituted through a process of negotiating meaning that is later shared by the members of the community and subject to reification by them. Hence, the notion of knowledge formation is central to the analysis of data from this project. When the Journeymen project was devised, the Swedish group chose three discipline areas – political science, psychology and mechanical engineering – with different characteristics as communities of practice within the university. They expected that educational design and students’ expectations of knowledge formation would vary among the programs. They also assumed that graduates would enter different sectors of professional work with different demands placed upon them as novices in working life that may not necessarily match the pre-supposed outcomes of the study program. The objective of the political science and economics program at Linköping University is to provide students with a broad knowledge of the social sciences. Political science students can choose to undertake a 2-year or a 4-year (master’s) course. An important aim of the program is the development of a critical approach

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to various political and economic theories. The most common learning and teaching formats during the first years of study are lectures, exercises and seminars covering a range of topics. Students can choose to specialise in either political science or economics as their major field of study during the later years. The Linköping University program for training psychologists is a 5-year, problem-based course. The overall educational approaches intend to stimulate critical reflection through an emphasis on problem-solving, experiential and selfdirected learning. Students encounter psychological theories, methods and problems in the context of research findings and applications. As research in the area is undergoing rapid development, it is seen as a matter of disciplinary competence for students to develop into independent and continuing learners. To help students develop into investigators and problem solvers, they are encouraged through aligned pedagogies to actively seek new knowledge. The program uses a modular design which includes the thematic introduction of sub-disciplinary perspectives. On the whole, students learn in small-group tutorials which provide opportunity to communicate with each other and evaluate their own learning. The program also includes clinical placements as part of each module, adding authenticity to the learning environment. Mechanical engineering at Linköping University is a four-and-a-half year program. The university lists the core competencies of engineering practice as computer literacy, design capability, material production skills and an understanding of economics and management. A basic engineering foundation is emphasised in the first two-and-a-half years. Then students choose to specialise in one of six branches of engineering. The program uses sequential and parallel courses of content, with pedagogy dominated by a traditional structure of lectures, laboratory work and exercises. In the final years, students undertake projects integrated with theory, computer practice and industrial site visits. To finalise their studies, students prepare a thesis, and the project work associated with the research takes place within an industrial context. These three different disciplines provide sufficient variety in their pedagogical focus to allow exploration of the overall knowledge claims in each area. The ways in which individual participants describe their experience, and the consequences of educational design, are considered to reflect features of discourses of knowledge and competence operating within the different programs. Through the individual perspectives of the participants, initially as students and later as novice professionals, we are able to uncover relationships between the educational programs and the broader constellation of practices constituted by working life, and to describe typical characteristics of the trajectories between the different communities of higher education and work.

The Influence of Curricular Design and Processes One of the aims of the Journeymen project was to try to relate the empirical findings from the interviews with students and novices in working life to the structure of the curricula in the respective programs. For that purpose, we collected all relevant

The Influence of Curricular Design and Processes

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documents and made an analysis of their structural features as well as the different content areas emphasised at different stages of the programs. From the collected documentation and interview analysis, we were able to discern a picture regarding the influence of curricular design and the established educational processes on students’ understanding of knowledge in the discipline. Here we explain the essential differences between views of knowledge that were obtained in each of the three disciplines. The written materials that describe the educational design of the political science program showed an emphasis on conveying basic descriptive knowledge of political theories and systems. The general learning and teaching approach in the early stages of the course consisted of lectures, independent projects and seminars. As the course progressed, basic descriptive knowledge was replaced with a concern to develop students’ abilities to investigate, analyse and compare different political systems, and the lecture format gave way to a seminar structure. However, the seminars followed a distinct and controlled process where interactions between students were predominantly teacher directed. Students undertook supervised thesis work in the latter part of the program, which helped to overcome their feelings of anonymity in the early stages of the course. Overall, there seemed to be a lack of contextualisation and meta-reflection throughout the course, maybe because it was concerned with the study of politics rather than study in politics, emphasising academic features of politics rather than encouraging students to acquire a particular political standpoint. The educational design of the psychology program showed a professional and clinical focus from the outset. The pedagogy used real-life scenarios in a problem-based structure as the point of departure for learning. Each student was treated as an individual, something that was emphasised by the initial selection interview. Students found themselves learning in highly-interactive, small-group tutorials. This seemed to have an impact on the development of their ability to find relationships between the parts and wholes of psychological theory and practice. Two discourses about learning psychology operate in the program: students learn to discern differences between relevant theories, and to integrate these theories with their own identity as students. They actively prepare for and participate in seminars and provide peer feedback for their fellow students, and this is considered an important element of psychological practice. Authenticity is provided through clinical placements which are a means by which content is integrated with learning about one’s own person. The educational design of the mechanical engineering program seems to follow a traditional style. The predominant view is that engineering is concerned with control of the physical environment and is directed towards development of appropriate products and techniques. The written materials and pedagogies in engineering seek initially to provide students with basic knowledge. This is achieved using a large number of sequential and parallel courses in a large-group lecture format. This contributes to the development of a competitive learning climate, which requires students to prioritise their personal commitment to engineering studies, and makes it difficult for them to discern their individual focus and understanding of the field of engineering throughout the course. The characteristic discourse about the knowledge base in engineering thus appears to students to be fragmented and multiple.

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Students’ Trajectories of Knowledge Formation Following their formal studies, eight of the twelve novice professionals from political science were found in the public sector (municipal and social welfare administration, national migration authority), two were working in private companies, one was still studying and one was unemployed. This range is typical of graduates of political science in Sweden. For these novice professionals, the transition to work can be described as a process of transformation of their academic and generic skills into specific capabilities required by their workplace. The skills they take with them to form the basis of this transformation include the capacity to read and write academic texts, and to analyse and describe problems, in combination with substantive knowledge about political systems and the institutions of democracy. I think the studies give you a good basis but you must be aware that it is only a start. In my view it is a lifelong learning process and you can’t say that now I am a political scientist when you have got your exam, but you always have to learn new things (POL15, Senior student).

This senior student evaluates the quality of the program, showing his view of the basis of knowledge in the discipline. He emphasises the lifelong character of learning in political science. However, it seems that students experience a vague exit from the program, possibly due to its focus on study of, rather than in, politics. In interviews towards the end of the program, students showed signs of a fragmented but developing identity as an independent investigator or civil servant. Senior students frequently mentioned the importance of analytical and communicative skills. As political scientists in Sweden, students indicated that a thorough understanding of the structure and functions of Swedish society is a significant element of professional competence. They suggested that a critical attitude is desirable, not least when assessing data gathered for investigative or evaluative purposes, and it seems important to be able to work independently and be able to search for relevant information. All 12 novice psychologists were working as clinical consultants. In comparison to their political science colleagues, they had all found work in their field of study. The new graduates worked in schools or hospitals, particularly in the psychiatric area involving children. The primary phenomenographic analysis indicated that they saw two ways of relating to their theoretical body of knowledge. In the “eclectic mode”, they combined fragments of knowledge from different theoretical schools into applications that could be used in a specific case. In the “pluralistic mode”, they selected a specific theoretical perspective from a wide repertoire to apply to a specific case. The existence of competing theoretical schools of psychology, and the application of these in clinical practice (an example of pluralism) stands out as the most important feature of the novice professionals’ interviews. They seemed aware of conjunctions and disjunctions between the knowledge explored in university and that which they utilised at work. The relation between formal studies and working life also developed an affective response from the participants, as the quote

Students’ Trajectories of Knowledge Formation

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below demonstrates. The trajectory from the educational program to working life is characterised by continuity and confirmation of the knowledge they acquired during their studies. I was surprised by, partly how easily I was entering the professional role and felt confident, and partly by that I could convey my knowledge to the people I met, I was a school psychologist, and there was no doubt about it (PSY6, Novice).

This novice school psychologist shows how her professional identity lends a form of legitimacy to her practice. In this example, the novice professional is probably only one of a few psychologists at the school and would not have a large peer group to interact with. The feeling of being put to the test in a specific context, rather than being socialised into the professional work, leads to a legitimate participation in the professional community shortly after entering working life. There is a confidence displayed in the above quote that indicates a close relationship between power and knowledge. Ten of the novice engineers were working in medium-sized and large private enterprises, while two of them were enrolled in workplace trainee programs. The novice engineers described their work using words like calculating and constructing, implying a strong practical element to their early work. They were involved with developing products or computer programs, or evaluating and certifying processes and products. It appeared that they were involved with hands-on work rather than academic knowledge production. Hence, for the mechanical engineers the trajectory from education to working life appears as a discontinuity in scope and responsibility of the professional role. Simply passing their academic program led to a formal legitimacy for work: this is in itself meritorious and enables a peripheral legitimate participation in the professional community of engineering. It also highlights the ritual aspects of engineering education, strongest in the early part of the course with the large classes and rigorous examinations. All qualified engineers have experienced a similar ritualistic form of education and therefore appreciate the work required to complete the formal components of study. This is an important part of that professional community, and the legitimacy can be described in the words of one of the participants: Engineers have a similar training, you have been through courses of similar difficulty, I think that is why you feel like an engineer, you have made it, there are several who don’t think they will make it when they start on the program, because it is really hard work. Very few really make it, and that is perhaps why you feel that you kind of are of the same kind (ENG29, Novice).

Each of the discipline groups shows a characteristic trajectory from studies into working life. In the case of the engineer, the ritualistic aspects of learning generate a feeling of sympathy and empathy with fellow engineers. In a different way, psychologists experience a form of knowledge and practice that seem immediately useful for work. But, where the engineers are legitimised by peers within the profession, the psychologists find legitimacy in a societal acceptance of their capacity. The political scientists in comparison to the other groups, need to be generalists, able to adapt and create knowledge for their working life.

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Ritual or Rational Preparation for Work Life? Using the evidence from the previous sections allows us to investigate the overall claims about knowledge in different disciplines using the abstract ideas of ritual and rational. Recall that ritual knowledge is concerned with formal preparation for work, with no clear reason for its inclusion in a program of study. On the other hand, rational substantive knowledge and skills are discipline specific, contextually situated and clearly relevant for specific work situations, while rational generic skills are applicable across a range of disciplines and transferable between different contexts. Such skills may be partly developed through the content of study programs, and partly through the learning and teaching strategies used. For political science, the relationship between higher education and working life could be described as rational, emphasising generic skills. The content of the study program is closely aligned with the prospective area of professional work. However, the generic knowledge typically needs to be transformed and contextualised to make it applicable. Novice professionals who completed their studies with a thesis emphasised how generic skills were developed through that process. The thesis comprised the general tasks of formulating, planning and carrying out knowledge-generating activities, under the critical eye of a supervisor. From the students’ reports, these activities prepared them well for the kind of tasks that they encounter in working life. In the political science program, the rational generic emphasis encouraged a view of the profession that was aligned to the overall focus of studies. The relationships between higher education and working life are described differently in the case of the psychology program. The content of the program is mainly rational, but in this case there is a high emphasis on the rational substantive as well as on the rational generic. The substantive knowledge refers to the competing schools of knowledge within psychology and the consequences of their application in relation to individual clients. The generic skills include the important ability to communicate and interact with clients. Some novice psychologists preferred to use a combination of ideas from various contemporary schools in psychology to construct an approach to a client. Others preferred to regard the different theories as a kind of tool box from which they could pick differing ways of defining clients’ problems and then dealing with them. In the mechanical engineering program, there is initially a ritual relationship between studies and working life. Novice professional engineers’ formal learning activity is recognised as a rite of passage and appreciated as such by their more experienced colleagues. On the other hand, the content of the course of study appears to be rational to enable students to develop the generic problem-solving skill that is seen as a hallmark of competence in the professional engineer. Kaufman and Feldman’s study (2004) described the concept of a symbolic entitlement, like the achievement of formal legitimacy through participation in the engineering program. Simply undertaking and passing the program acts as a ritual door opener to the labour market. The rational generic relationship between higher education and work as found in political science could be seen as one example of how academic competence

The Complexity of Knowledge Formation

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is transformed through experiences of work. This result supports Barnett’s claim that what constitutes an academic is not given a priori, but a matter of “dynamic relationships between social and epistemological interests and structures” (1994, p. 256). The rational substantive and rational generic relationships between higher education and work, found as an outcome of the problem-based learning design in the psychology program, could be viewed as one example of how operational and academic competencies are bridged.

The Complexity of Knowledge Formation An overview of the outcome of the empirical aspects of the Swedish part of the Journeymen project is provided in Table 4.1. The table highlights the important relations between the structure of the curriculum, the trajectory of knowledge formation, and the relationship between formal studies and working life. The first two aspects contribute to expert students’ understanding of important disciplinary ideas and practices, and provide a lens through which novice professionals can interpret their learning experiences for the workplace, as shown in the third aspect. Each of the areas investigated has a different type of professional focus. The political science graduates have to seek out an area where their particular concentration of skills and knowledge may be appreciated. For these graduates, a large portion of their early working life consists of making sense of the generic knowledge and skills they have encountered in relation to political environments. Their first working experiences are also their first experiences of trying out knowledge in practice (as opposed to their studies, which focused on knowledge of practice). By contrast, the psychology graduates have a clearly defined vocation comprising a high public status based on trust. The engineers enter workplaces where their knowledge base and skills set is appreciated. However, unlike the political scientists, there is little acknowledgement of their ability to create new knowledge. Of the three areas investigated, the psychology program has the most direct professional focus. There is a high degree of continuity between being a student and being a novice professional. The socialisation and transition to work is immediate, and novices show evidence of professional skills in practice. This form of Table 4.1 Overview of the empirical outcomes of the Journeymen project Group →

Political scientists Psychologists

Mechanical engineers

Sequential

Thematic

Parallel

Trajectory of knowledge Rational generic formation

Rational substantive and rational generic

Ritual and rational generic

Relationship between studies and work

Continuity

Discontinuity

↓ Aspect

Structure of curriculum

Transformation

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immediate integration could be likened to Wenger’s (1998) notion of full legitimate participation in the professional community. The emphasis throughout the program on contextualisation to the field of psychology is a feature of the overall educational design. The problem-based approach contributes to novice professionals’ feelings of preparedness for work. These positive feelings about work have also been noted in medical education when it uses a problem-based learning approach (Jones, McArdle, & O’Neill, 2002; Antepohl, Domeij, Forsberg, & Ludvigsson, 2003; Willis, Jones, & O’Neill, 2003; Bland, 2004). The novice professionals in the other groups end up in a variety of organisations with a range of work tasks. In these disciplines, it may be more difficult to set up an educational program that would prepare people for working life in a substantive way. Both groups have experienced the transition from higher education to work as a process involving either some kind of discontinuity, as for the mechanical engineers, or transformation, as for the political scientists. It seems important for educators to be aware of the impact of pedagogy for future professional work. Some novice professionals experience a discontinuity, which implies that the content and pedagogical focus of the formal education is not aligned to the needs of the profession. There seems to be a potential to improve such courses, for instance, by including subjects focusing on professional preparation. Other novice professionals find that they need to re-assess and re-contextualise their formal studies in the light of their new practice. This adaptability is favoured in a range of professional areas, and it seems likely that such graduates are more mobile and adaptable in the work context. Universities contain a variety of courses of study. Some of them belong to the classical professional programs that prepare graduates for well-defined professions such as medicine and law. Others are based on newer professional groupings, such as engineering and psychology. Students who enrol in such programs encounter teachers who have themselves passed through these programs and are likely to serve as very clear role models for them. We might expect that the two obviously professional programs – engineering and psychology – would be experienced by students as closely modelled on the requirements of work tasks. However, only the psychology program stands out as rational in both a generic and a substantive sense. The rational preparation for working life reported by psychology students may have its origin in the problem-based pedagogy that uses professional problems as scenarios for students’ formulation of their learning tasks. It may also be due to the strong focus on the psychologist’s role throughout the whole program. The engineering program is the only program from our empirical studies that is described as having a ritual relationship to working life (although the law and mathematics groups from the Professional Entity project also have this characteristic). Yet it also contains a rational generic focus on problem-solving skills (which is also a characteristic of law and mathematics courses). This program places initial emphasis on the scientific and mathematical foundations required for the later and more engineering-specific knowledge areas. Even after graduation, the novices have clear memories of these early parts of their studies, perhaps because many of them experienced this stage as the most taxing of the whole program. Most of those who

Further Discussion

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drop out from the program do so during the first two semesters. It seems that students’ opinions about the first year of studies may be coloured by the difficulties of coping with demanding courses and passing formal examinations. Yet, they seem to have great difficulty in recognising the contributions that these early courses make to their professional competence. The program in political science seems to be closer to a classical liberal arts program, while still preparing students for a professional future, albeit one that is less obvious. The political science students who emphasise the rational generic aspects of preparation for working life mention the thesis work as an important period of their studies. The search for information, its systematising and synthesising, and the critical scrutiny of that information in combination with written documentation is a common task in their professional work. The specific knowledge of political institutions seems to be more of an asset in their private discussions of political issues. Table 4.1 also highlights the contribution of curricular organisation for the development of professional knowledge and attitudes. The organisation of the content in the three programs could be described as sequential, parallel or thematic. The political science program has a typical academic focus. The sequential organisation is driven by the internal logic of the discipline, which maintains the idea of learning basic facts about different political systems and institutions before analysis, comparison or application of these facts. The program is built on the idea of stepwise progression of knowledge, gradually leading to an eventual understanding of the field and the development of generic academic skills. The mechanical engineering program also has an academic focus, but this is somewhat blurred by the parallel organisation of courses, and the lack of links between them. For both groups, the contextualisation of knowledge to working life occurs, if at all, late in the program, or is left to the novice professionals to handle individually. The thematic organisation of the psychology program, on the other hand, integrates the academic and professional aspects. The potential for contextualisation seems to be enhanced through the use of real-life scenarios as the point of departure for learning. The ways that these three discipline areas organise their content and learning and teaching approaches provides models for the investigation of other disciplinary areas. In the following discussion we will look at how curricular approaches, the dominant characteristics of the discipline area, the pedagogy, and student characteristics and expectations combine to explain individual trajectories into working life.

Further Discussion The Journeymen project highlights some aspects of knowledge formation that could be critical to learners, novice professionals and educators from fields other than those described above. The model shows a trajectory of knowledge formation that is influenced by the nature of the discipline and the associated profession. Educators can probably recognise characteristics of their own courses when reading

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the descriptions of the situations in psychology, political science and mechanical engineering. We wonder then, how far these aspects of knowledge formation can be found in any discipline or professional area. Certainly our co-analysis with the professions represented in the Professional Entity study suggests that each professional discipline has a specific relation to knowledge formation. In addition, the clarity of the target profession may also play an important role in knowledge formation: some professional fields are rather “diffuse”, while others are quite “clear”. This issue of clarity will be further explored in Chapter 7. However, expert students may view their trajectories into working life differently, depending on the clarity of the professional field and the manner in which the profession is presented in terms of its pedagogy. For instance, the psychology students clearly see a continuity between the pedagogic component of their student life and the skills and knowledge that become evident in early professional work. By contrast, the mechanical engineers, despite a parallel pedagogy, find it more difficult to make connections between formally-acquired knowledge and their early professional work. The examples presented in this chapter show that students in different discipline areas experience the knowledge of that area in distinct ways. The character of knowledge presented in higher education is influenced by the way that knowledge is understood and used within the professions. Each professional area has an epistemology that becomes apparent to expert students. The concepts of ritual and rational forms of knowledge help us understand some of these epistemological differences. Areas that show a more ritual character tend to deliver content in sequential ways and to use learning and teaching approaches that emphasise the acquisition and recall of that content knowledge. Areas that display a more rational character seem to rely on quite different pedagogy, and we will explore this further in Chapter 7. However, such characterisations are not fixed for all time. In the early years of medical education, the profession encouraged a ritual approach to knowledge. In those times, doctors also had the hallmark of elitism, and this was emphasised by a pedagogic focus on intense ritualistic learning. More recently, as society has changed, the medical profession has become aware of the importance of communicating with their client group. This has seen a revolution in medical pedagogy and the forms of knowledge favoured in medicine. In one sense, the epistemological value of the profession has shifted, and with it the higher education pedagogy. Hence, the descriptions of different forms of knowledge identified in the Journeymen project throw light on the way that professions can change their essential characteristics. It is important to note that different disciplines combine the ritual and rational aspects of knowledge in different proportions, and this has implications for how professional knowledge is viewed by students, novice professionals and teachers. Alongside these constructs, students contribute to the constitution of their own knowledge in a specific area through the consideration of their previous learning experiences, their perception of the ways in which the profession works, and the manner in which they perceive and react to higher education pedagogies. Expert

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students are able to build on these experiences in a way that supports their transition into working life. The Journeymen project provides evidence for differences in students’ transitional experiences. They can experience the transition from higher education to working life as either continuity or discontinuity or recontextualisation. Each of these positions represents the flavour of the student experience. With continuity, students see a smooth relation between the knowledge and practices explored in the higher education context and the knowledge and practices of the profession as they make the transition to becoming a professional. With discontinuity, they experience a disjunction between the forms of knowledge and practice presented by higher education and that of working life. This disjunction may occur if knowledge is experienced in higher education as rational but the new workplace assumes instead a rigid knowledge set and practices. It can also happen if the form of knowledge experienced in higher education is ritualistic (giving the impression that this is the sort of knowledge required and favoured in the workplace), but then the workplace tends to emphasise problem identification and solving. With recontextualisation, students see the transition as requiring the ability to adapt to the new professional contexts. At different stages through this chapter we have suggested that various overarching personal and professional skills may have something to do with this trajectory into working life. In the chapter that follows we will explore in depth the notion of professional dispositions, which become a sort of palette of colour that helps make sense of knowledge for the professions and learning for work.

Chapter 5

Professional Dispositions: How Are Professional Dispositions Developed in Higher Education?

Introduction A topic of current interest in higher education is the development of professional dispositions (or generic skills, graduate attributes, capabilities). Much has been written about the development of such skills as numeracy and literacy, teamwork and the ability to communicate effectively, contemporary computer and information technology abilities (Bennett, Dunne, & Carré, 1999; Star & Hammer, 2008). Many universities in Europe and Australia list and describe the various attributes they expect their graduates will possess. National statements discuss the importance of such skills and attributes (Hager, 2006), national policy documents attest to their importance in preparing a skilled and competitive workforce (Down, 2006), and individual researchers have discussed the theoretical bases of such formulations (Barrie, 2004). We have extended our projects to include investigation of students’ views of some less-obvious (or harder-to-understand) dispositions: creativity, an ethical stance, awareness of issues of sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity. From analysis of business codes (for instance) generated to support business practices, these dispositions are favoured, yet recognized as the ones that require most regulation (Kaptein & Schwartz, 2008). These and other dispositions are important to novice professionals in their move towards full professional participation. In this chapter, we report on students’ views of such dispositions derived from specific studies with students in the area of business and economics, as well as from unprovoked comments from students in our other discipline-based studies. Our results shed light on the contemporary balance between generic and substantive professional knowledge that is required by students making the transition from studies in higher education to professional work. Before we go any further, it seems useful to discuss the terminology of these professional “things” since they can be referred to under a variety of labels. Firstly, they are all generic rather than situated in a particular discipline, and secondly, they are requisite properties or capabilities (in some sense) of successful graduates. Some of them, such as communication, teamwork or IT ability, seem to be best described as skills, or more specifically as “enabling skills”. Their function is to allow the expert student or novice professional to function smoothly in his or her studies and A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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professional workplace. Others, such as creativity, ethics, sustainability and crosscultural sensitivity (the focus of this chapter, and referred to by the acronym CESC), are better described as dispositions, and more specifically as “sensitising dispositions”. As opposed to the skills mentioned previously, they represent approaches towards studies or professional work, or a particular “orientation to engage with the world in some way” (Barnett, 2007, p. 102). A student does not learn creativity, ethics, sustainability or cross-cultural sensitivity (though they may learn components of them), nor does a teacher teach them: rather, a student’s view of the world is broadened by considering these dispositions and by viewing problems through their various lenses. Tertiary students in a wide range of areas will have need of a combination of these and other professional dispositions developed through their studies, to prepare them for their future workplaces. When they graduate, their employers will expect them to demonstrate creativity in problem finding and solving, to have a well-developed ethical stance and to be able to contribute to their company’s sustainable development processes, and they will expect their graduate employees to show a high level of cultural understanding and empathy. Yet in the same way that students show different conceptions of their discipline and their learning, they will also show different conceptions of such professional dispositions: indeed, their lecturers will also view such dispositions in qualitatively different ways. Most tertiary students will anticipate (and indeed meet) a high level of disciplinespecific content in their studies. Additionally, maybe even early on in their university studies, they will meet components of these professional attributes, encountered initially in isolation from each other. Depending on their discipline, they may come across creativity in a fairly nebulous way, and maybe using another term (such as “innovation”, “flair” or “problem solving”), perhaps in terms of assessment criteria that specify creativity as a high-level learning outcome. Of course, some disciplines may carry out a more thorough investigation of the notion. Ethical conduct and attitudes are an important feature of any human activity, and may be met initially as components of case studies in a range of areas. Again, some disciplines may make more direct reference to ethics. Students are likely to first meet the notion of sustainability in terms of arrangements for the running of their campuses – the buildings and grounds in particular, as this seems to be the way that many universities translate the various calls from world bodies to pay more attention to sustainability in education at all levels. And finally, for some students it can come as a surprise that different educational systems, language and cultural backgrounds generate different attitudes to cross-cultural sensitivities. For many students, this insight will come from propinquity, either by rubbing shoulders with overseas students studying in their country or by studying themselves in another country. Of course, there are other such dispositions, and indeed we came to our investigations of the CESC dispositions after looking at statistics students’ conceptions of statistics (as we have described in Chapter 3), and then broadening the study to look at conceptions of statistics from the view of students of other disciplines (such as engineering, psychology, health sciences or tourism) who studied statistics as a component of their professional preparation. We postulated that for such

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students statistics was a professional component representing a high-level numeracy which could take its place alongside a range of dispositions including the CESC components. And, essentially, what does it mean to include such dispositions in an investigation of the process of moving from expert student to novice professional? It means broadening the attention of university students (and their teachers) from the technical material and the disciplinary content of their studies – the ritual and rational substantive in the terms of the Journeymen outcomes – to the contextual setting of studies directed towards preparing for a professional working life, and the generic skills, capabilities and ways of thinking that are an essential part of such professional work – the rational generic aspects. It means acknowledging the importance not only of disciplinary techniques and artefacts – the extrinsic technical and extrinsic meaning aspects of the Professional Entity – but also of professional and personal context – the intrinsic meaning aspect. It represents a broadening from the epistemological aspects of learning, the focus on the sources and nature of knowledge within the discipline, to include the ontological aspects of professional working life, the becoming and being a professional within that particular profession (Fig. 5.1). This description shows that in terms of our model of professional learning, professional dispositions are represented as the background context of the diagram, pertaining equally to the horizontal dimension of learning for work and the vertical dimension of knowledge for the profession, and represented in the space between them. Expert students develop generic skills and capabilities, and engage with sensitising dispositions in the context of their studies. The generic nature of these dispositions makes them applicable throughout their studies and beyond. As novice professionals, they transfer this experience to their working life and re-apply it in the professional context in which they find themselves.

Fig. 5.1 Model emphasising professional dispositions

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Investigating Professional Dispositions One of our recent projects examined these CESC dispositions from the perspective of international and domestic business students at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. We utilised the same general approach as for components of the Professional Entity project, based on semi-structured interviews. We carried out interviews with a total of 44 students, half of them overseas students, mostly from south-east Asia, half of them (Australian) domestic students (though some with overseas family backgrounds): this broadly reflects the high proportion of overseas students studying business in Australian universities. Half of the students were undertaking business degrees at the main university campus, the other half at an independent institution allied to the university and teaching the same curriculum (often with the same lecturers). To achieve the flexibility required for working with busy students, about a quarter of the interviews were carried out by e-mail, another quarter in the traditional face-to-face format, and the remaining half of the students were interviewed live but in groups of two to four people. In such group interviews, each student was asked the same questions in turn, including any follow-up questions, so individuals’ views could be distinguished (although, of course, they could be influenced by other participants in their group). We avoided people in their first or last years in order to focus on students who were somewhere in the middle of their studies. The study aimed to explore the different ways in which students understand creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity in the context of their business studies and their perceived future professional roles. It allowed them to come up with their own definitions of the terms, rather than supplying a definition from the literature or the researchers’ point of view, and to explore their ideas about each disposition. Students were asked questions such as “How do you understand the idea of creativity?”, “What does sustainability mean to you?” and “What role do you think cross-cultural sensitivity will play in your future professional work?”, with follow-up questions such as “Could you give me a specific example of that?”, “Could you elaborate on what you mean by ‘thinking outside the square’?” and “What do you mean by moral obligations?” They were also asked specifically about the inter-relationships between the four dispositions and their university studies: “What relationship do you see between these notions and your studies at university?” and “How do you think these issues prepare you for professional work?” We have previously carried out a preliminary examination of the whole body of transcripts to identify thematic categories for each of the dispositions (Reid, Petocz, Braddock, Taylor, & McLean, 2007). Here, our main analysis uses a phenomenographic approach to investigate the qualitatively different ways that students viewed creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity, and also their intersections. In the following section, we show that students’ conceptions of these dispositions, singly and in combination, can be displayed as phenomenographic outcome spaces with three levels, again hierarchical and inclusive, and broadly paralleling the levels of the Professional Entity.

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Students’ Views of Professional Dispositions We will first summarise the outcome space for each disposition, then describe the general characteristics of each of the three levels and illustrate them with quotes from the interviews. In the following section, we will look at students’ views of the intersection between the dispositions. Students’ conceptions of creativity can be arranged in a three-level hierarchy, from most limited to most expansive views: (C1) Definition. Students talked about creativity in terms of fairly simplistic definitions or stock phrases (“thinking outside the square”) that revolve around the notions of difference or newness, but did not come closer to any deeper thinking about creativity. All students seem to have been exposed to the word “creativity” as part of their studies, but to some of them it was an unexamined idea. (C2) Attribute. Students viewed creativity as an attribute of either a person or a process or a product: the most common attribution was to a person. While the three attributions could be related (in that a creative person would be carrying out a creative process resulting in a creative product), the view was limited and “one dimensional” in that the focus was on only one of these, and “fixed” in that the person (or process, or product) was either creative or not. (C3) Comprehensive. Students viewed creativity in several (usually three) distinct ways – as a characteristic of a person, or as a process, or as a product – and the views were combined or integrated, resulting in a multi-dimensional conception of creativity. People talking about creativity in this way also came up with novel views of creativity itself, for example, as a product of a combination of ideas from different people. Students’ conceptions of ethics can be similarly displayed: (E1) Subjective beliefs. Students talked of ethics in terms of personal, subjective beliefs and ideas about right and wrong. Ethics was held to be a personal idea, naive in that the concept was largely unexamined and un-theorised in any way. Some students needed to have the word translated before talking about it. Others mixed up different uses of the word, for example “work ethic” was treated as part of ethics. (E2) Rules. Students viewed ethics as personal or subjective beliefs about right and wrong, informed by rules. These rules could come from a variety of origins – their family, the Bible, the university, the company they worked for, or the laws of the land. Students’ experiences showed that different sorts of ethical values could be found in different life contexts (professional work, local club) and that they could adapt their subjective ethical views to business-related ones with no problems of logical dissonance. (E3) Effect on others. Ethics consists of personal beliefs about right or wrong, informed by rules, and modified by the notion of treating others well – in

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the way that you yourself would like to be treated. Students were aware of and discussed the notion that their actions can affect others, and they could see that expedience is not a valid justification for any action. The conception includes a clear focus on the effect of one’s ethical stance on other people through critical reflection. Students’ conceptions of sustainability are shown in the following outcome space, again from most limited to most expansive views: (S1) Distance. Students approached the idea of sustainability via a definition, maybe a dictionary definition of “keeping something going” (such as themselves or a business), but essentially to keep the concept at a distance and avoid any further engagement with it. Some students needed to have the word translated before talking about it. (S2) Resources. Students approached the notion of sustainability by focusing on resources needed – labour, markets, environmental resources – particularly for the purposes of keeping a business going. In a more general context, people talk about material (minerals, water, soil), or biological (fish, crops), or human (minority languages, populations, economies) resources. (S3) Justice. Sustainability was approached by focusing on the notion of “fairness” from one generation to the following one, or even within one generation. The idea is that sustainability can only occur under these conditions. Students talked about “what a company must give up in order to keep going”. And finally, students’ conceptions of the fourth disposition, cross-cultural sensitivity: (CCS1) Awareness. Students talked about cross-cultural sensitivity in terms of being aware of the “otherness” of different people and groups (and also of how easy it is to give offence). This awareness was based heavily on proximity in the specific context – an Australian university with large numbers of overseas students studying with local students. (CCS2) Knowledge. Students focused on cross-cultural sensitivity in terms of their knowledge of other people’s and groups’ beliefs, approaches and culture. This was often linked with the notion of expedience – using knowledge about others’ cultural differences as a way of managing them in a business situation. (CCS3) Respect. Added to an awareness of difference and a knowledge of other people’s beliefs and cultures was the notion of respecting others’ beliefs and changing one’s actions and even one’s own beliefs in response to them. There was also an awareness of the basic idea of globalisation – that every student is an international student in some respect or context. For each disposition, the narrowest and most limiting conception is characterised by subjectivity, minimal awareness, unexamined thinking and definitions or stock phrases designed to keep the concept at a distance. A selection of representative quotes exemplifies this in each of the dispositions.

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(C1) Xena: Creativity is something new and different. A new way to examine something, like thinking outside of the box. (E1) Adam: Ethics. Ah, that’s a very grey area. I’m not sure. I haven’t put a lot of thought into it, but I think, I think everyone does behave according to their ethics. I mean, you wouldn’t do something if it wasn’t, if you don’t feel it was right. (S1) Liz: Well, if I use the literal translation of the word, sustainability for, to me would mean, yeah, just longevity or something like being able to, sustainability, just being able to, you know, hang in there. (CCS1) Hercules: Especially this industry because as the person working in a hotel, when you meet different people from all over the world, and then he may come and tell you I would like, I don’t know, meat dipped in some strange sauce, you know, and for you it’s really strange.

At the broader, intermediate level, the conception of the disposition includes external influences beyond the subjective, and a more argued and measured thinking. Students displaying this level of conception often show that they also understand and can use the narrowest level. This illustrates the empirical aspect of the hierarchy, as in Kitty’s and Samantha’s quotes below. (C2) Kitty: Well I would like to consider myself a somewhat creative person, meaning that I enjoy ‘thinking outside the square’ and I am always on the constant search for innovation both in practices and in myself. . . . Creativity means to me – the ability and freedom to differentiate oneself from another. I think it is a quality that all people should have because it defines them as a person, their abilities and also their work ethic. (E2) Samantha: Ethics. Determining what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s up to the law and yourself to determine this. Up to law being rules and regulations that are imposed already and to determine yourself it being something along the lines of gut instinct. If it makes you feel bad then its most likely wrong. (S2) Erica: So if you’re a company that relies on coal sources for your energy then you can’t say that that’s a sustainable way of operating because at the end of the day the coal sources are going to run out. So it’s not a sustainable way of doing something but if your energy sources are from the sun, then you could say well we, our operations are sustainable because we could practically keep doing this forever. (CCS2) Jennifer: And it’s also interacting with people from other countries and being, having this social sensitivity you’re more aware of the people’s culture, the people’s feelings. And then I guess in that way you can develop a more harmonious relationship with people in the workforce in the future. . . . And then in that way you can work together better.

At the broadest and most holistic level, each conception contains the idea of awareness of other people’s points of view, the notion of fairness in balancing their and one’s own views, and the possibility of personal change in response to this. Due to the hierarchical nature of the outcome spaces, students who demonstrate these broadest levels often show an awareness of the narrower conceptions as well. Paul exemplifies the comprehensive conception of creativity, a combination and integration of creativity as process (developing new ways of doing a job), then person (part of being human), then product (a solution that works) and then process again (teaching young children things):

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5 Professional Dispositions (C3) Paul: Creativity is I think the process of developing new ways of solving a particular problem or doing a particular, particular job. . . . I think it’s part of being a human being. I think creativity is in every aspect of life. You know, from organisational work to, you know, university study to, to relationships, to you know, to I mean, it’s, every aspect of life creativity touches in a lot of ways, so. . . . In organisations, you know, problems come up, like there are problems in organisations all the time. And you know, if you come up with a creative solution like a, a solution that works, that, I don’t think that, yeah, it doesn’t have to be new, or it’s just a solution that really sort of, you know, solves the problem and helps the organisation to really sort of refocus, you know not worry about the, the problem so much. But to resolve the problem and get on with what it’s there for. Yeah, I mean it’s creativity, you know, in teaching young children things, you know. Helping them to draw butterflies on their face, doing face-painting or you know, cut-out great, you know, shapes, you know, of you know, things that they dream up or, you know, colour in or whatever, I mean it’s all part of the creative process.

Andy illustrates the broadest conception of ethics, as considering the effect of one’s actions on others, but also incorporates personal beliefs and hints at the influence of rules, in this case from a company: (E3) Andy: Many people think it’s just the basic difference between right and wrong. I think your personal values and what you believe to be moral and right have a lot to do with it. Pressures from above or from just the surrounds can, can lead you into perhaps making a decision that may not be right in your gut feeling. But it’s the position that you need to take in regards to perhaps generating wealth creation for the company if you’re in that position. . . . A lot of time I find myself in that position over the course of the years that I’ve been supervising people and I honestly have to go with my gut feeling and let that be known that I am not, as much as I want to help the company do what they, you know, I can’t not do something to somebody that’s not fair, it’s all about being fair, right and just. And maybe that’s not a good to look at it in business, because business is about making money. It’s the bottom line. Or generating wealth creation or however you want to classify it. But the bottom line is if you can go home, if you can go home and look in the mirror, and be happy with yourself about what you’re doing, that’s fine. And if you’re so removed from what you’re doing to the rest of the people for career enhancement or whatever, then I don’t want to work for you anyway.

Tim displays the most holistic conception of sustainability, though he starts with a definition and then focuses his discussion on the use of resources, before raising the notion of justice from one generation to following ones: (S3) Tim: I like to think sustainability is ensuring that you have enough productive assets in place to maintain or to expand the amount of output you’re looking to get. So, you know, I mean, we’ve got the sun, which, okay in our lifetime will be, you know, more than enough to sustain us and will be sustainable in the next few million lifetimes. But then, when we’re looking at things like, you know, agriculture, and sustaining soil and conserving the use of soil, conserving trees, well, I mean, we can go and woodchip all the forest we like, but you know, and we can plant seeds behind it, but it’s going to be another 20, 30, 40 years until those seeds mature. And if, if we can’t maintain a balance . . . I think it’ll have resounding effects over the next 60 to 100 years. . . . Well, again it’s, it’s going to be very important because essentially, without managing resources optimally, and effectively, and without being able to reuse those resources, I mean, it’s one generation that’ll benefit and then every generation afterwards will, you know, suffer the consequences, you know, of our greed.

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Finally, Henry shows the broadest conception of cross-cultural sensitivity as respecting others’ cultures and admitting the possibility of personal change in response. At the same time, he shows awareness of otherness and of the expedience of knowing about different cultures: (CCS3) Henry: You’re not sure that you’re going to stay in India forever; you may have to travel to different parts of the world. So unless and until you are sensitive to other cultures and listening to, you are able to appreciate other cultures, you’ll, you’ll not go anywhere. You should be able to appreciate other cultures. Well, and if you are able to mould yourself into their culture, well and good. But if you want to stay back and still follow your own culture, yes do it, but you should have the eye and patience, you should have that sense of appreciation, sense of acknowledging other cultures; if you can’t do it, I don’t think you can be successful, at least in this globalised world. Maybe when you are in the domestic area if you’re in your own country, country town there’s nothing to stop you towards follow your culture; you are the king over there. But you are in a globalised world now, you better be aware of the rules of the game here.

The quotes presented in this section point out the huge difference in views of students who may well be sitting together in the same classes. The phenomenographic analysis highlights the qualitatively different ways in which students might understand notions such as creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity, from the pithy definitions and unexamined, subjective views at one extreme, to the eloquent, thoughtful and sensitive views at the other extreme.

Students’ Views of the Intersections Between Dispositions Most studies exploring generic or graduate skills or capabilities look at them in isolation from each other. However, dispositional thinking, ways of thinking about the self in relation to the world, seem to be more powerful when they are considered as intersecting ideas. By powerful we mean that students and graduates who are able to see intersections between them also seem to be able to make action-related decisions that tackle more than one issue at once. In response to specific questions, students were provoked to formulate their ideas about the intersections and connections between the four CESC dispositions. Again, these ideas can be structured in a phenomenographic outcome space, though in this case the focus is a “second order phenomenon”, the relationship between four phenomena. Once again, we can consider three levels of conceptions, from narrowest to broadest. (X1) Disparate. Students saw essentially no connections between the different dispositions, stating this explicitly (Liz) or describing them in completely independent ways (Janine): Liz: I’m finding it hard. Oh I guess they’re all, I find it hard to even draw parallels between the four, let alone my studies at university. . . . I don’t know how that sort of, how does that link to my study at university. I don’t think it does very much. Janine: Now I live in Australia on my own, and my parents are in China, I have to cook myself. Maybe I think can I cook the fish in a different way? That’s something about creative. And cross-culture, we have group work and some member is from Africa. And their

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5 Professional Dispositions ideas are strange for me and also their accent. I am not familiar with their accent. But we have to deliver the assignment, we have to cope with each other.

(X2) Sporadic. Students noted sporadic connections between two or three of the dispositions, for example, Jonathan’s discussion of the ethical dimensions of crosscultural sensitivity: Jonathan: I think the most important link between, off the top of my head, I think ethics and the racial sensitivity I think is definitely go hand in hand, because if you are like culturally sensitive and respect other culture I think that’s the first step of being ethical already, and by running ethical business, it doesn’t means that you only don’t rip off people or you don’t treat other people bad, it’s just basically acceptance and treat everyone like a human being.

(X3) Inter-connected. Students were aware of connections between the dispositions. These may be somewhat forced (e.g., they are all taught at university), or more natural (e.g., they are all needed in preparation for the workplace). Eddie: These notions give me a whole new view of my future professional work, such that I am able to see the bigger picture of it, these notions would lead me to take the organisational perspective as a whole, rather than confined to my personal perspective, which would have missed out certain important implications. . . . I think university is a good training ground to raise your awareness to these notions, and also to deepen your understanding of them.

The quotes from this broadest level show that some students had a clear idea of the notion and importance of professional dispositions (or generic skills, graduate attributes) as a whole, and could speak fluently about the role that they would play in their future professional (and even personal) life. On the other hand, the quotes from the narrower levels show that some of the students were essentially unaware of any coherence between these aspects of their studies. And, interestingly, there was no strong connection between the level of conception of the individual dispositions and the level of conception of their intersection. Some students showed the intermediate or broadest conceptions of each of the individual dispositions and yet saw essentially no intersections between them, while other students viewed the individual dispositions at the narrowest level, yet expressed a clear idea that they were in some sense related to each other.

Broadening the Base for Dispositions In the previous sections we have shown that students have qualitatively different views about a range of professional dispositions, in the same way that they have qualitatively different views about their discipline, their learning and their future profession. We have demonstrated the various conceptions of four “sensitising dispositions” using quotations taken from transcripts of interviews with business students at an Australian university. However, similar views of (some of) the CESC dispositions can be discerned in several of the other discussions that we have carried out with students, both in the Professional Entity and the Journeymen projects. In

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those cases, statements about creativity, ethics, sustainability or cross-cultural sensitivity were made in the context of questions about discipline, learning or profession, rather than in response to specific questions. Nevertheless, they are consistent with the outcome spaces that we have described for each of the dispositions and for their intersections. In a related study with accounting practitioners examining the nature of accounting work, Sin, Reid and Dahlgren (2009) describe expert professionals’ views of ethics. In that study, ethics was described as the broadest category of accounting work – but the meaning of ethics for this professional group corresponds with our students’ second category. For instance, one of the participants said the following: Because he is the producer of the figures there is a tendency for him to fudge those figures to give a different outcome to different people. In practice people generally actually fudge figures for various reasons, one figure for the bank for financing purposes another figure for the tax for tax purposes and another to the management and shareholders (p. 9).

This view supports the students’ idea that ethical activity can be tailored to a particular work environment. In another article, Sin, Reid and Jones (2010) provide quotations from student accountants. As with the expert professionals, student ethical thinking correlates with the first and second conceptions described above: S2: There are no standards about ethics. What is right and what is wrong is only what you believe in. S1: Accountants may be asked to record or report in a certain way in order that shareholders will say ‘okay, we made some profits and we are doing well’ while it is not the truth. So I guess . . . there are definitely ethical dilemmas.

Here we have seen that students describe similar ethical views to professionals. Further, students show the same range of views of another one of the dispositions, sustainability, as do their teachers. We investigated academics’ views of sustainability in the context of a study that identified the need to integrate ideas of sustainable development within university curricula in all disciplines to prepare students for their professional role. Such integration is supported by appeals from world bodies such as the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit to “integrate sustainable development into educational systems at all levels of education in order to promote education as a key agent for change” (United Nations, 2002, paragraph 121, p. 61). In that study (Reid & Petocz, 2006), we showed that lecturers of postgraduate courses in a variety of disciplines held conceptions of sustainability (in the context of their teaching) that could be structured in a three-level outcome space that was described in essentially the same way, and using the same labels – Distance, Resources, Justice – as were the students’ conceptions. This may seem surprising, but we have observed in a variety of situations that older or more-experienced participants do not automatically hold broader views of a phenomenon. For instance, some first-year students of statistics show the broadest conception of the discipline as an approach to life, while some final-year students show the narrowest conception of statistics as techniques (Reid & Petocz, 2002). As another example, we have found that primary-school children and adults in the general population seem to show essentially the same

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range of views about the notion of “environment” (Petocz, Reid, & Loughland, 2003). Another “sensitising disposition” that we will consider here is the notion of internationalisation. It seems to share features with cross-cultural sensitivity and sustainability, and like them, often makes appearances in university policy documents, with only implicit agreement as to its meaning. Literature shows a wide range of views of internationalisation, including aspects of student mobility (Fallshaw, 2003), educational or economic development (Ball, 1998; Bryson, 2001), development of empathy towards other peoples and cultures, changing behaviours to preserve the world’s resources (Andreson, 1999) and adjustment to different learning cultures and languages (Scheyvens, Wild, & Overton, 2003; Montgomery & McDowell, 2004). Another pertinent question is the underlying epistemology of students’ previous academic experiences: whether knowledge is packaged as a series of irrefutable facts, learned through acquisition and repetition, or constructed in a particular social situation and hence subject to critique from different positions. The very idea that knowledge can be marketed emphasises the notion that it is finite and unchanging, and is sustained by educational practices that encourage memorisation and recall of facts. Focusing on students’ creation, application and integration of knowledge presents an opposite view, and seems to be related to higher-quality learning outcomes (Biggs, 1999). In contrast to the CESC dispositions, we have not specifically interviewed students or their teachers about the notion of internationalisation. However, based on students’ and lecturers’ views of some specific disciplines, particularly mathematics, and by analogy with their views about sustainability, we have postulated a model of views of internationalisation in the context of university education and explored its consequences (particularly in terms of mathematics and statistics pedagogy, see Reid & Petocz, 2007; Petocz & Reid, 2008). The model is again set out in the form of three levels, from most limiting to most expansive: (I1) Distance. The discipline (whatever it is) is already international. A focus on marketing aspects (such as international qualifications) ensures that internationalisation is of only peripheral concern to educators. (I2) Curriculum. Internationalisation can be approached via content (examples, issues, subject matter), methods (pedagogy, epistemology) and the characteristics of the student body (experience, mobility, heterogeneity). (I3) Justice. Internationalisation is approached by focusing on the notion of “fairness” of contacts between educators and students in different countries, and can essentially only occur under such conditions. While this model was developed by analogy with the previous phenomenographic models, support for it can be found in various reports (for instance, Adams & Walters, 2001, for the distance view; Ryan & Hellmundt, 2003, and Haigh, 2002, for the curriculum view; Jackson, 2003, implicitly and Atweh, 2004, explicitly, for the justice view).

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In one of the few studies to investigate students’ views in this area, Wihlborg (2004) provides an interesting analysis of Swedish student nurses’ conceptions of internationalisation. Using a phenomenographic approach, Wihlborg identified three levels of conceptions. The first was referred to as “competition, formal validity”; nursing gives an internationally recognised qualification that can be used to get jobs in other countries. The second was a “Swedish perspective on the nurse education program”; inserting international content into the Swedish nursing curriculum so that nurses can better deal with people from other national backgrounds. The third was called “socio-cultural knowledge” ; knowledge of the similarities and differences between cultures, which went far beyond the current syllabus in nursing. This outline seems to be broadly parallel to our “views of internationalisation”, although taken from the viewpoint of students rather than lecturers. Wihlborg (2003) also investigated lecturers’ views, which she found to be essentially parallel to students’ views, as in our studies of views of sustainability.

Discussion In this chapter we have explored the notion of professional dispositions and their role in moving from expert student to novice professional. Generic skills such as numeracy, teamwork and computer skills can be viewed as “enabling skills”, essential components of smooth functioning as a student or a professional. But notions such as creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity pertain to a different level of generic functioning for an expert student making the transition to novice professional. They can be regarded as “sensitising dispositions” that represent particular orientations towards studies or professional work and in some sense open people’s minds to different ways of looking at the world. In terms of our model of professional learning, such dispositions form the background context, linking the horizontal dimension focusing on views of learning for professional work and the vertical dimension referring to views of knowledge for the profession. In the model, they are represented by the space between the two dimensions. The diagonal direction represents aspects of identity and engagement, combining the horizontal and vertical dimensions and crystallising from the background context represented by the professional dispositions. We will investigate notions of identity and engagement in more detail in Chapter 6. In the same way that students have qualitatively different views about their discipline and their learning, so also they have qualitatively different conceptions about professional dispositions. At the narrowest level, students see only a limited role for generic skills or graduate attributes in learning for professional work and in the view of professional knowledge, focusing instead on the technical and ritualistic aspects of learning and knowledge, respectively. We have presented quotes from various students in which they give simplistic definitions or examples of these dispositions, or admit that they have not really thought about them. Such students define the profession for which they are preparing in terms of the techniques that they are required

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to know, memorise and reproduce, engaging primarily with these technical aspects and viewing their future profession through this lens. At the broadest level, by contrast, there is a strong focus on the personal and professional links between learning and future work, and a keen appreciation that as well as the discipline-specific knowledge base there is an important resource of generic ways of thinking and engaging with the world. Engagement with studies and profession is at a high level, as students see themselves becoming and being a professional, and their identity is strongly linked with their position as a professional. Barnett (2007) talks of “the will to learn” and identifies dispositions as the expression of this will to learn, stating that “each disposition is an orientation to engage with the world in some way” (p. 102). While Barnett focuses on dispositions as personal qualities, we are using the term in the sense of specific capabilities or ways of engaging with the world at a high level. The complexity of interactions between professional dispositions provides challenges and opportunities for educators. Firstly, the challenges lie within ourselves and our academic contexts. Although we have presented evidence from students in some particular discipline areas, there is very little material that shows how teachers understand and integrate these ideas within their curriculum, teaching practice and research. Individual lecturers have opportunity to investigate their own current approaches to professional dispositions in two ways: looking at the materials that they have developed for students and constructing a self-reflective dialogue. Examination of materials can show how often, and where, any of the dispositions are currently included. The same scrutiny could also show how often, and where, intersections between dispositions are incorporated in the overall learning plan. In our experience, most curriculum documents will not contain much evidence of this type. Similarly, examining personal teaching perspectives for inclusion of professional dispositions may indicate opportunities for curriculum change. In the past we have found in workshops that peer activities between teachers have generated interesting discussion surrounding implicit views of ethics, creativity, sustainability or internationalisation. Once the implicit is made explicit, then it is possible to put in place strategies that are appropriate for particular disciplines. Secondly, an opportunity exists for disciplinary-based research on professional dispositions. There is little research literature that explores the intersections between the professional dispositions described in this chapter, and we feel certain that there are openings for future research in this area, maybe building on our earlier analysis. In terms of the ways that university lecturers set up the conditions for learning, we can distinguish between a “narrow” and a “broad” curriculum. A narrow curriculum looks inward to the discipline and focuses on the techniques that will be used by students in specific situations. A broad curriculum looks outward beyond the discipline and focuses on its use as an inclusive tool to investigate, participate in, or even change the students’ world. Fewer courses seem to be built on this approach, despite the benefits that it can bring in terms of relevance and students’ enthusiasm. A broad, holistic curriculum, with appropriate generic focus on dispositions, can make students more effective as future professionals. It would seem that

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a curriculum that acknowledges and specifically includes students’ ideas about such professional dispositions could benefit students through an increased possibility of engagement with studies of their discipline. In this way, we move from narrower conceptions of learning as knowledge acquisition to broader conceptions of learning as including ontological change. This theme will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 7.

Chapter 6

Professional Identity: How Is Professional Identity Developed?

Introduction In this chapter we investigate the ways in which students develop a professional identity in their transition from tertiary studies to professional working life. From our empirical investigations, we know that students entering university have different notions concerning their future profession. In some instances, the profession has a high profile and students have a clear idea of what studies in the discipline will involve, and also of the nature of professional work in that area. In other cases, the characteristics of the profession are much less clear, and so also are students’ ideas of studies in the discipline, and the nature of the associated professional work. Our basic thesis is that students’ views of their future profession, and their pedagogic experiences in preparing for this profession, have a direct impact on their sense of professional engagement and on their development of a professional identity. We support our thesis with empirical data from the several different discipline areas involved in our combined studies. These different discipline areas also represent a broad variety of pedagogical approaches. For each discipline, we apply our model of professional learning to show how engagement and identity formation can be seen to be related to students’ learning experiences – which in themselves build up an expectation of the future profession – and the manner in which they anticipate their professional working life. The variety of disciplines and pedagogies that we use as examples allows us to make a generalised claim about the relationship between views of profession and types of pedagogy and identity formation. In our model of professional learning (see Fig. 6.1), engagement with learning and thence professional identity formation are represented by the diagonal arrow between the vertical dimension of “knowledge for the profession” and the horizontal dimension representing “learning for professional work”. This diagonal direction is conceived of as a combination of aspects of the Journeymen and the Professional Entity projects, the former focusing primarily on the view from a specific discipline and the latter focusing on the view from an individual student. We can describe students’ views of engagement using three qualitatively different categories, derived from the conceptions of knowledge for the profession and the conceptions of learning for work. Although these are derived categories, they can be supported by A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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Fig. 6.1 Model emphasising identity and engagement

empirical evidence from various studies. Professional identity is developed through this combination of broadening conceptions of knowledge for the profession and learning for professional work, supported by broader and more effective levels of engagement. Though the majority of our evidence is from specific disciplines, and indeed specific programs, representing the vertical dimension in our model, we also rely on evidence from individual students, representing the horizontal dimension. While ritual aspects of knowledge provide only formal contribution to students’ knowledge, it seems that the rational substantive aspects of knowledge contribute to their knowledge about the discipline itself, while the rational generic aspects allow them to experience the nature of the discipline, and thus contribute to the formation of identity as a professional in the discipline. Further, the most limiting aspect of the relationship between learning and professional work, the extrinsic technical, provides limited scope for engagement, while the extrinsic meaning aspect affords an engagement with the meaning of the artefacts of the profession, and the broadest intrinsic meaning aspect adds the ontological dimension, wherein a student sees a strong connection between their personal and professional self.

The Concept of Identity Formation in the Realm of Studies and Work When we talk about identity in this book, we are focusing on the aspect of identity that is situated in the realm of studies and work, and our view rests on some theoretical assumptions about the concept. We see identity not as a homogenous,

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rational and stable core of the personality, but rather as a multifaceted, relational and fluid concept. The formation of identity is open to influence by social interactions and contexts, and hence allows for consistency and contradiction to coexist in a particular person’s experience. People are often involved in social groups in learning and work situations. An example of this is the use of small groups for various learning tasks at university. In this situation, there is an expectation of common understanding (in the roles and rituals associated with university group work), and also an expectation of individual difference (the educational and life experiences that individuals bring with them into the group situation). Universities often use this form of group interaction to simulate the “real world” of professional work. Postmes, Haslam and Swaab (2005, p. 9) suggest that at the group level an inferred social identity is present and that through the group’s communication individuals develop an internalised social identity. In turn, the internalised identity is mediated through a person’s individuality, which then informs the development of a constructed social identity. Here we can observe an example of micro-change where group interactions, situational expectations and individuality combine to provide a situation where an individual can become a different sort of a person. Looking beyond a particular educational situation, Axelsson (2008) points out two themes about identity formation discernible in the literature that concern construction of knowledge and identities throughout a person’s lifetime. On the one hand, the formation of identity can be understood as an essential and self-reflective project (Giddens, 1991), built on the process of making and revising rational choices. On the other hand, people are subject to a range of influences from the actual conditions in their everyday life, and this tends to limit their possible choices. According to this latter perspective, identity or identification does not necessarily rest on a rational basis (Bauman, 2001, 2004): it is seen as a shaping process rather than an essential concept. Conflicting emotions or ambivalence arising from everyday life are understood as subjective dynamics which influence the construction of knowledge as well as the shaping of a professional identity (Axelsson, 2008). Contextualising this to the realm of studies, when students start their education towards becoming a professional they will encounter the social practices characteristic of their chosen disciplinary field. They will be exposed to the world views, theories, skills and languages embedded therein, and this will influence their identity building as they come to appropriate some of these cultural properties. In that sense, universities, with all their diversity in disciplines and professional perspectives, have been viewed in the literature as hosting a number of “academic cultures” (Snow, 1964) or “tribes and territories” (Becher, 1989). Thus, educational design, expectations of knowledge formation and identity building in students vary among the array of university programs. In an example of the discipline’s influence on identity formation, Hunter, Laursen and Seymour (2006) found that “becoming a scientist” was facilitated by the inclusion of authentic science tasks in the curriculum. In that case, students were involved in “undergraduate research” and they indicated that the process enabled them to think like scientists. Hunter and colleagues claim that the authentic activity enabled students to demonstrate attitudes and behaviours

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needed to practice science, understand the nature of research work, appreciate how scientists practice their profession, and begin to see themselves as scientists (p. 49). Our research shows that individual students respond to such disciplinary expectations in different ways during the course of their education. Their ways of engaging with learning in their respective disciplinary and professional fields have an impact on how they identify with the knowledge required for their coming professional work. It is this process of professional identity building in university and in the trajectory to working life that is the focus of the research underpinning this book. The process of becoming a professional can also be viewed through Wenger’s (1998) notion of community of practice. The ideas of mutual engagement, shared understanding, negotiation of meaning and participation seem as relevant to shaping a professional identity in the academic as in the business context. Communities of practices are discernible within the variety of disciplinary and professional fields hosted by universities. The ways that disciplines are organised, and the professional paradigms that are embedded in them, have an impact on the participants’ ways of reasoning, communicating, writing and acting; that is, on the ways in which they participate in their respective disciplines. The content of their educational programs, as well as their ways of working, contribute to students’ learning. The socio-cultural contexts, in terms of academic disciplines and their differences in ontological and epistemological standpoints, also impact on the design and delivery of university courses, which in turn influence the processes of learning and identity building.

The Notion of Engagement In the context of tertiary studies, engagement can be conceptualised in terms of the involvement that students have with their disciplinary studies, and with their developing professional role. It is possible to investigate engagement from various perspectives, such as the pragmatic viewpoint of effort, time on task and use of resources (Kuh, 2006), or the social viewpoint of sense of belonging or lack of alienation from the group (Kember, Lee, & Li, 2001). In Wenger’s (1998) terms, students must negotiate meaning to experience the world through meaningful engagement. Barnett (2007, p. 22) points out that some degree of engagement, or personal identification with the project of learning, must be present for “genuine” higher education. He also indicates that a feature of such engagement is that it involves some voluntary commitment on the part of the student. These same characteristics are also present in the transition from higher education to work, where the project of learning expands to include the project of becoming a professional in a particular discipline. In terms of our model of professional learning, the diagonal direction implies derived or second-order categories or levels of engagement that can be described by combining the characteristics of the conceptions of knowledge for the profession and learning for professional work, obtained from the results of the Journeymen and


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Professional Entity projects. These categories of engagement could be described as follows: (N1) Formal. A physical presence and a willingness to do what is asked for (by teachers, employers). (N2) Disciplinary. A meaningful interest in and interaction with the artefacts of the discipline, a desire to understand the profession. (N3) Essential. A personal commitment to and involvement with the discipline, a personal identification with the profession. It can be seen how the different levels of the vertical and horizontal dimensions can lead to these levels of engagement. When knowledge in the discipline is ritual and the view of the profession and learning for the profession is focused on the technical aspects, a formal engagement is likely to result. When the focus is on meaningful disciplinary knowledge and learning is directed towards specific disciplinary objects, then a disciplinary engagement is the likely outcome. When the view of knowledge in the discipline includes a range of generic as well as substantive aspects, and when a strong personal connection with discipline and profession is present, an essential level of engagement occurs almost by definition. Although these categories of engagement are derived from the vertical and horizontal dimensions in our model, they do have some empirical support from various sources. From our interviews with students in the mathematical sciences, the following two very short and unguarded quotes, not given specifically in the context of discussion about engagement, seem nevertheless to give an indication of engagement at the formal level: Anne: The truth is, I just learn what they teach me and I am not really sure about how broad statistics is yet. Brad: [What do you think it’s important for you to learn about mathematics?] Is ‘whatever I think’s going to be on the final exam’, the wrong answer or . . .?

The following two quotes were reported by Reid and Solomonides (2007) from discussions about engagement and creativity with students of design. The first one seems to indicate a discipline-based view of engagement, while the second shows the features of the essential level of engagement: Being able to learn the processes of design and use my practical skills and rationalism to provide solutions for a living is a dream come true. Once the brief is set I’m engaged and from then on I love having the problems to solve (ES26). For me personally to be ‘engaged’ with my studies is to connect on a personal level with the work I am creating. It is to be thoroughly engrossed with what I am doing with an understanding on the personal level. . . . The more engaged I am with my studies, the more I want to learn (ES16).

Taken together, these (and other) quotes support the existence of our postulated categories of engagement in the context of tertiary studies, and from thence into early professional working life.

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Influence of Discipline on Identity Formation Axelsson’s (2008) discussion highlights two faces of professional identity formation, the individual and the group. The previous quotations concerning engagement represent the view from individual students of the way that they are developing into professionals, in this case mathematical scientists or designers. In addition, we can discern a group response to the various features of a discipline, the pedagogy characteristically used in that discipline (maybe in that specific course), and the profession to which the studies lead. Various researches preceding and following from the Journeymen project provide some insight into this aspect of identity formation. For instance, an earlier study showed that there seem to be considerable differences between how students in computer engineering, psychology and physiotherapy conceptualised the problem-based learning in their professional study programs, and how they then identified with their coming profession (Abrandt Dahlgren, 2000, 2003; Abrandt Dahlgren & Dahlgren, 2003). The typical perspective from students of computer engineering was that knowledge is indisputable, and learning consists of mastery of content. This same view was implicit in the course’s learning objectives, a detailed and proscriptive checklist of content that left little room for students to choose an individual path through the learning process. Students reported that small-group tutorials and discussions were important for reaching consensus about how the content should be understood and the problems tackled, and they believed that the correctness of the results could be checked. This group highlighted the importance of effective, collaborative action towards goals that are not disputed, and involve mastery and control of the objective world. By contrast, the psychologists viewed knowledge as relativistic. Their course objectives were loosely sketched, and students interpreted this to mean that the content was negotiable and that they were participating responsibly in the process of constructing professional knowledge. They carried the relativistic perspective into their tutorial participation, analysing in groups the consequences of applying different theoretical perspectives to particular psychological cases. They dealt with the uncertainties of their learning tasks or problems by confronting these different perspectives and focusing on the variation between them. The group of physiotherapists showed a third distinct approach to problem-based learning, with a focus on pragmatic performance emphasising student activity. They found the course objectives too abstract and incomprehensible, portraying as they did the outcome of the whole semester’s work. In reaction, they transformed the clinical problems for study into a series of actions and activities that a physiotherapist would undertake in a particular case. The course objectives became the schedule for the administration of different activities and tasks, and in this way came to play a secondary role in defining the learning tasks. Learning as clinical contextualisation seemed to resolve the uncertainty of the learning tasks, transforming them into professional actions. These examples illustrate how different epistemological and ontological standpoints, embedded in disciplinary or professional fields of knowledge, can shape different identity-building processes for students. The computer engineers built


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identity from collaborative and individual consideration of rational problems that had specific and confirmable solutions. The psychologists built their identity from the group negotiation of professional knowledge in the context of open-ended cases. The physiotherapists transformed their learning tasks into professional clinical activity and built their identity from this process. Baxter Magolda (2004) also identified these variations in the nature of knowledge in her longitudinal study. That study followed students from a range of disciplines and identified four ways of knowing, from the rather simplistic to complex thinking. Students described “absolute knowing” which focused on factual data coupled with the idea that knowledge is static and created by others. In some ways this parallels the experience of our computer engineering cohort. An extension was labelled “transitional knowing”, and was displayed by the large majority, about 80% of participants. In this transitional orientation, knowledge claims could be disputed. The psychology group in our studies could fit into this category. The final two knowledge orientations were “independent knowing” and “contextual knowing”: the former recognised the fluidity of knowledge creation and the latter focused on the situation of the knowledge. This seems to be similar to our broader constructions of professional knowledge. Our studies, and Baxter Magolda’s, focus on how students in formal learning situations construct knowledge and how this knowledge is a component part of their developing sense of professional identity. The development of professional identity should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon that takes place at the university or in the work context, but rather a dynamic relationship between different life spheres. In a follow-up to the Journeymen project, Nyström (2009) carried out a longitudinal study of student and novice professional psychologists’ and political scientists’ processes of professional identity formation in their transition from higher education to working life. She reported three different forms of professional identity – non-differentiated, compartmentalised and integrated – moving from an individual to a relative focus, and exemplifying different negotiated relationships between professional, personal and private life spheres. She categorised the professional trajectories of her participants under six themes: (T1) Learning continuously. Maintaining learning in the field to strengthen a career, or simply for personal interest. (T2) Establishing oneself. Developing a stable identification with professional role and work tasks. (T3) Mastering a toolbox. Developing the range of technical and generic skills applicable in the profession and beyond. (T4) Fulfilling a commitment. To humanitarian motives, to “make the world a better place” or “help people in need”. (T5) Searching for a professional field. Uncertain views of professional trajectory, looking for a field of application. (T6) Changing directions. A desire to do something different, either in the same professional field, or in a totally different area.

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These results indicate how professional trajectories varied between participants. Further, they showed no fixed order: individuals could experience several of them sequentially. Nyström argued that it is through the negotiations between personal and socially derived imperatives that identity formation progresses throughout working lives. In their research in the context of learning in design, Reid and Solomonides (2007) identified the importance of affect as a component of professional formation and engagement with the profession. In their study, the “sense of being” – that is students’ core view of themselves – afforded different orientations towards their “sense of artistry” (affect), their “sense of being a designer” (the profession), their sense of transformation (learning), and their “sense of being within a specific context” (becoming, belonging, involvement). Henkel (2005, p. 158) concurs, describing a post-modernist perspective on identity and engagement: Postmodernism celebrates fragmentation, fluidity and the transitory. Not only does the postmodern subject neither have nor want a fixed identity but s/he may be pulled simultaneously in different directions by contradictory identities.

In the following sections, we will use examples from our empirical investigations to show how engagement and identity materialise as a function of students’ learning experiences. The first two examples are case studies of discipline groups of students, highlighting a generic view based on ideas from a number of students in the group. The two following examples are case studies of individual students in a specific disciplinary context. Together they show aspects of engagement and development of professional identity from both group and individual viewpoints.

Developing Engagement in Learning and a Sense of Identity with a Profession – Case Studies Political Science We have previously met the students of political science in the context of development of views of knowledge. As a follow-up to the Journeymen project, Johansson et al. (2008) studied the ways in which junior and senior students in political science experience their program and envisage their future in working life. They showed that first-year students imagine a somewhat idealistic professional role as political scientists, being watchdogs for democracy and global justice as the most important features: There’s a certain attitude that is important among political scientists, not to judge other, other nations’ way of looking at things . . . That’s really the most important thing, to be open minded. The openness contributes to creating a discussion; if you rule things out you will get conflicts, conflicts might not lead to people killing each other, but cooperation might be hampered (POL2, First-year student).

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Students in the latter part of their studies report a somewhat more realistic view, identifying an emerging identity as investigators and civil servants and an appreciation of the components of their studies that enhance their generic skills. Political science is about critical thinking, analytical skills and thinking abstractly, having a sceptical attitude and being analytical. I think they’re the two most important views of it [political science]. Thinking abstractly and objectively as far as possible (POL18, Senior student).

First-year students describe how they were drawn to applying for the program as a personal education project, with their main objective being to receive a broad education. Johansson and colleagues point out the dual nature of knowledge in the discipline: on the one hand, dealing mainly with factual knowledge about different political systems, and on the other hand, focusing on comparisons and critical analyses of political ideologies. However, the critical element for students’ engagement with learning in this discipline seemed to be the affinity that they felt for their personal education project. In this instance, students experienced an element of autonomy created through choice. The project enabled them to reflect on their own key interests and learning goals and to explore them in a way that seemed to them to be personally meaningful. These two faces of political science as a discipline (factual knowledge and critical analysis of political ideologies) shape a heterogeneous and sequential learning trajectory for the students. It seems as if the discourse about educational design in the early part of the political science program concerns the development of basic descriptive knowledge about political systems and theories. As the program proceeds, the important aim becomes instead to develop students’ abilities to investigate, analyse and compare different political systems. This is reflected in the teaching and learning approaches used in the program. Lectures and seminars dominate the early stages, and this changes to independent thesis work under supervision in the latter stages. There seems to be limited contextualisation and meta-reflection throughout the program, since it emphasises academic features of politics rather than encouraging students to acquire a particular political identity: I don’t feel particularly well prepared for any kind of work, what I mean is that you are not mentally prepared, knowledge-wise it is there, but whether I’m prepared is difficult to say before I come out. The basis is there, but it feels like somewhere in between (POL20, Senior student).

Johansson’s study shows that the change from the descriptive to the analytic aspect of knowledge in political science also seems to bring with it a changed student-teacher relationship, as the teacher becomes more of a guide or tutor and less of a presenter of information. When asked about the most significant learning process during their studies, most of the senior students mention their thesis. Writing the thesis provides opportunities to focus on a particular issue of interest, and the students apply the theories and research methods that they have developed. In this way, the thesis can be seen as a turning point for the students, forcing them to engage actively in the construction of the learning task constituted by the thesis work.

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Nyström’s study (2009) confirms the picture of the graduates from political science leaving their studies searching for a professional field, with a somewhat unclear picture of their professional trajectory. Three years later, most of them are employed and have transformed their general knowledge to specific areas of work. Many of them envisage at this point a trajectory that keeps them within this professional field. The majority emphasise the need for continuous learning in their profession, which Nyström interprets as a form of renegotiation of their identities as members of a community of practice.

Design Reid and Solomonides (2007) investigated students of design, from Australia and the UK at various stages within their degree, in situations where they made a clear ontological claim about themselves as designers. Traditionally, student design studios are oriented around the production of artefacts that could be used in reality and this generates an authentic learning environment. The core of their experience is a sense of being – it is from this central position that students then focus on the different aspects of professional design work. The sense of being emphasises their confidence, happiness, imagination and self- knowledge, using positive language to describe their personal relationships and approaches to engagement and creativity. In the first quote below, the notion is developed that design and creativity represent a complex relation between self and the world, of lasting impact and at an essential level. The second quote is a succinct articulation of the importance of sense of being: Myself, I want to be creative in life and I want to create, express my imagination. I think design is probably my most suited outlet and creativity is very important. The more creative I am to create work that strikes a deeper chord instead of something superficial or something people will say oh that is pretty, that is nice, that is colourful, I like that but something that is a little bit more original as a lasting impact hopefully (DEP S7). . . . and basically it is not about money, it is not about what jobs you can get, it is about preferably doing what you want to do and second of all being who you are (DEP S12).

This notion of sense of being seems to be the essence of design students’ professional identity. Other aspects are brought into focus as the student finds a contextual need for them: these aspects can be found in the notions of artistry, being a designer, transformation and specific context, which are all components of a designers work. For instance, students described a sense of artistry, which focused on the practical utility of their work, their ability to solve design problems and the actual construction of an object. In this category, engagement is represented by the physical outcome of a problem while creativity is related to the aesthetic outcome of the object: Engaging with your studies means to be organised with how you go about your work and to look at it from all angles, not to limit your ideas and to try and make sure you don’t create something because you think it’s good but to make sure it appeals to a wider audience (ES 11).


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A different way of thinking about identity is apparent when students focus on the specific work of the designer. The sense of being a designer is a category that involves being a professional member of the design community and taking on the attributes of a design professional: For me being engaged in studies is to work for fun, to be disengaged from the competition and just enjoy your work. It’s rare that the success of your project escapes the ‘rat race’ and becomes something actually meaningful to your life, but when it does it becomes less about stress and deadlines but more about the work and in turn the deadlines are met and the stress is minimal (ES 15).

Another category, the sense of transformation, relates to the ways that students’ identity is changed through learning. Here, students indicate that they are personally transformed by their experience of becoming designers, and that they develop an appreciation of the work and life of a designer over time and with proximity to designers, teacher and peers: I would say that if I feel I am ‘engaged with my studies’ I am fully involved in a project, I feel happy and confident about what I am doing and most importantly I am enjoying it. It is the kind of project where I never fully stop thinking about it – everywhere I go I see things that could be relevant or useful (ES 14).

An important issue of engagement and identity is raised by students who indicated explicitly that they were able to change their way of thinking and working when the context changed. They described a sense of being within a specific context that allowed them to engage creatively with the activity to hand. They recognised that part of their experience of the context was how they belonged to it and the nature of their involvement: I think there has to be a breaking of the boundary between teacher and student, has to be more of one level relationship rather than dogmatic teaching. I think there has to be a more a passing on of knowledge rather than enforcing that this is how you do it, this is how you should think. There should be a generation of ideas, a generation of a way of thinking rather than saying these are my philosophies and this is how you shall think, this is how you should put into your design practice (DEP S17).

One of the participants provides evidence for the way in which each of the categories may be related to the intrinsic central concept of sense of being: Being ‘engaged with my study’ to me is imperative if you wish to be successful at it. ‘Engagement’ conjures up thoughts of marriage, a marriage between your own ideas and those of the discipline you’re involved in. I think this is relevant as I personally believe that if you are truly engaged in something then it will naturally and subconsciously become a part of your life. As far as design is concerned I feel that it is a ‘lifestyle choice’ – a way of thinking – and I find it very easy to consider problems and approach them as if it is a design brief which demands a solution (ES 22).

This student uses a marriage metaphor, which implies a long-term commitment to design. This metaphor occurred in several of the transcripts demonstrating a generally high level of disciplinary commitment amongst this group of students. Identity is central to their notion of themselves as designers, but it is also the space where their understanding and experience of the other aspects is meshed. Hence, engagement with studies can be seen at the essential level, an “interlocking”

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between people, process, product, and appreciation from the design community. This is clear from statements that design identity “becomes part of your life”, that it is a “lifestyle choice”, and a “way of thinking”. The way of thinking seems to flow over into other areas: “I find it very easy to consider problems [suggesting any type of problems] and approach them as a design brief which demands a solution.” When students internalise the discipline in this way it provides them with metaphors that enable a better understanding of the relationships between identity, engagement and learning. Design students’ engagement with learning seems to be intimately connected with the pedagogical context – the design studio. The identity expressed as sense of being interacts with learning, or sense of transformation, as students consider the ontological aspects – the being and becoming – of their situation. They allow themselves to be personally transformed by their experience of being a design professional, through integrative work and learning practices and proximity to professionals. For example, in design it is common to undertake studio practice where a student might work individually or in collaboration on a sustained problem or activity en route to the solution to a problem and some kind of designed output. Typically, the tutor would be on hand to offer guidance or advice, or to prompt new action through some form of intervention. We might consider this a tutorial where the combination of trial and error and expert guidance prompt thinking and understanding, resulting in a sense of transformation on the part of the student. One of the primary concerns of art and design educators is to realise the creative potential of learners and this is primarily mediated through discursive teaching methods such as tutorials, individual and group critiques, and debates. A group tutorial, for example, will often take the form of each student presenting some aspect of their work for critique by the rest of the group, including the tutor. And characteristically, rather than taking a teacher-centred position, the tutor seeks to help students to develop their conceptions, usually through some form of dialectic (Solomonides & Reid, 2009). As Postmes et al. (2005) argue from a psychological perspective, and as Wenger (1998) argues from the view of organisational change, identity formation can occur in social group settings, but it is also internalised and becomes an individual’s means of understanding themselves in relation to their broader context. The examples from political science and design show how different disciplines and pedagogies contribute to identity formation at a group level. The cases that follow examine two individuals’ experiences.

Mathematical Sciences – George We interviewed George when he was in the third year of a 4-year degree specialising in mathematical sciences at an Australian university. He described his strong personal engagement with mathematics – his mathematical identity – in this way:


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Well, I sort of have a real passion for it, like I grew up enjoying mathematics and really liking it and I just sort of want to be the best that I can possibly be. I don’t know how good I’m going to be. And I just, because I’ve got that passion for it, I read a lot of books on mathematics and stuff like that and just various types of topics like Fermat’s Last Theorem which was an unsolved problem until about five years ago or something, and yeah it’s just a personal interest thing, I suppose.

As with the design group, he describes an affective dimension which generated further intentions to learn independently. The quote also shows that he is aware of a general discourse surrounding mathematics, that of the individual mathematical genius. He mentions Fermat (such a genius) in close proximity to questions relating to his own ability. His early interest in mathematics has drawn a picture of professional mathematical activity. Like the music students described in Chapter 3, George is working in a mathematically-related area while he is studying. Hence, his affective interest, his knowledge of professional work practices, and his interest in the discipline area combine to influence his motivation to engage with studies and the way in which he sees himself. He related his reasons for undertaking the mathematics degree and its relation to his current work in a financial institution: At the moment my course is sort of directed at my work, so I’m doing it basically to get an overall understanding of what I do at work. I’m a currency options trader at a bank, and that has a lot of underlying models that they trade off, and that sort of thing, and I want to be able to understand those models and how they are derived basically. That’s why I am trying to do this degree.

Despite this obvious connection between his studies and his work, in the earlier part of his course, George viewed much of the mathematics that he was studying in a ritual way: Well, the first couple of years, because I work overnight, nightshift, it is a bit hard to study and do uni at the same time. And the first couple of years I found that I was, you know, cramming basically, couple of weeks before the exams. But the last couple of years I’ve really tried to understand the content rather than just, you know, memorising a whole heap of formulas and memorising how to do things.

However, in his more recent study he was certainly aware of the rationalsubstantive aspects of the mathematical knowledge that he was developing: I work in foreign exchange and I work on the currency options desk which is a derivative of an asset price which is the Aussie dollar. So as that varies you get these derivative products which change price, and the prices of these products are sort of based on a certain model which was derived by Black and Scholes, and I just want to understand the mathematics that underlie that model, to actually understand my job a lot better.

Despite his obvious interest in mathematics, George was ambivalent about what he would do with the mathematics he was studying, and tended to discuss the possibilities in terms of mathematical techniques, illustrating the extrinsic technical approach to professional work. At the moment I work in a dealing room where my mathematics, well the advanced mathematics, isn’t used very much, whereas if you were to move to a different section like the quantitative analysts section, mathematics would be used a lot more. . . . Well, there’s one option that I stay where I am and possibly become a full currency options trader, which

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won’t be using my mathematical skills very much. I’ll have to have a knowledge of certain things, but once you have that knowledge you won’t be using maths very much at all. Or I could go into the quantitative side where I’d be using a lot of statistics and stochastic processes and stuff like that just to model the, well, price options and price derivatives and stuff like that.

He expressed his desire to do honours and become an “expert” in some area of mathematics, but this was couched in these same terms: I may possibly do Honours or something and then I’ll have a specific understanding of one certain section of mathematics and I might maybe, hopefully, become an expert in that sort of area. . . . Well just, you know, have a really good knowledge of that specific area of mathematics, like whether it’s, I don’t know, number theory, or whether it’s statistics or anything like that, just so that I could probably, you know maybe, write papers on it or prove things or stuff like that.

On the other hand, George said that he was interested in understanding the mathematics behind the financial models he works with, and this demonstrated an extrinsic meaning approach to his study-work relationship. George’s engagement with mathematics in a professional sense seemed fairly ambivalent – illustrating our formal or disciplinary levels – as shown by his continuing doubts about whether he would use his mathematical studies in his career. This contrasted with his descriptions of a strong personal interest in mathematics: Like I said, it’s really a passion of mine and I just want to get as good as I possibly can at mathematics, there is nothing that I really sort of want to specifically get out of the course, it’s just that I really enjoy it and a lot of it is more for my own personal interest too.

In summary, George talked about the rational substantive aspects of mathematics and referred to ritual mathematical knowledge, but he made no statements about the rational generic aspects of mathematics. Despite a strong personal interest in mathematics, he was somewhat ambivalent about a personal connection to the mathematical profession, and limited his comments to the extrinsic meaning and extrinsic technical approaches to mathematical work. In terms of our model, George seemed to position himself professionally towards the top-left or the centre. His professional identity and engagement seemed to be correspondingly weak, supporting our hypothesis that they are related to the horizontal and vertical dimensions.

Psychology – Erika We talked with Erika when she was coming to the end of a psychology degree at Linköping University, Sweden. She was in the process of developing a sense of identity as a psychologist, based on her training as a student of psychology and its initial application in the workforce: I think, during these last months, when I have been to a couple of employment interviews, I started to feel like, goodness, this is an interview to employ a psychologist, and that must mean that I am a psychologist. . . . And also, last autumn when I did my internship, I think I was seen as a psychology student by the psychologists, but the other professionals saw me


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as a psychologist. Even though I told them that I was not ready yet, I was on my second-last semester, they still regarded me as a psychologist. So then I felt more like a psychologist. . . . But when I am here at the department, I feel like a student.

She was aware of the importance of engagement with her studies, and quotes from various sections of her interview indicate both a disciplinary level and an essential level of engagement: You have to dare to show yourself, to interact with the teachers during lectures and dare to question what they say, and yes, to show that you engage yourself. And I think that you do this by being, by not buying everything that they say, but by being a little more critical.

Erika was appreciative of the rational substantive aspects of her psychological studies: I have been able to practice what a psychologist does in working life, and conversation, we have videotaped conversation sessions, and to do judgements about patients, and testing, and so forth. And those things are pure psychologist tasks, that I have been able to practice and been approved on. And that has felt quite good, to be able to try those things that I am supposed to be doing in real life later, in the role of a psychologist.

However, the most important things she learned in her course would be described as rational generic, such as self-reflection, critical thinking and the ability to integrate multiple perspectives: The most important thing has been that I have learned a lot about myself, I have learned to reflect and be critical in my thinking. . . . I think that a psychologist is good at trying different perspectives on a problem, that you cannot see things simply, but need to be able to think; it might look like this, but it could also be that, and that you consider the family, the individual and the societal perspectives, to be able to see both big and small, to have many perspectives, that is what I think a good psychologist is good at.

Erika talked about the technical aspects of her studies, such as what to do for a person who is clinically depressed, but often went beyond this to discuss the meaning of the psychological jobs that she was undertaking – showing the extrinsic meaning component of the Professional Entity, as we showed in Chapter 3: I am not always sure that, if you give someone a diagnosis, well sometimes it can lead to that person getting a better, more financial support, better chances of getting an education and so on, but it could also mean a stigma that will follow this person their entire life, which can make things more difficult when they apply for a job, or want to have children or whatever. So there are many steps, and you have to think ahead for everything you write in patient records, when testing and everything, I think. That you really check the use of what you do before you do it. What is my testing going to be used for, what is the knowledge I am bringing going to be used for?

She also made some comments indicating that she was aware of a strong personal connection with her studies and professional work. Indeed, it seemed that the intrinsic meaning approach was an essential part of the pedagogy in her course: It has been kind of extraordinary, because it is so much that is focused on getting to know yourself, and to connect the knowledge you get to your personal self all the time. So it has been in a way more exhausting than just studying an ordinary subject. More demanding

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on a personal level, but still something that I enjoy very much, and really developing the personal self.

The specific pedagogical approach of her course, problem-based learning, became an integral part of her view of psychological knowledge and the psychological profession, and she referred to this in many comments throughout the interview: I believe in my educational program we have learned so much about critical thinking, and that there are no wrong and no right answers, so when I think of my program in particular, I think it is pretty much a common way of thinking. But when I compare to previously, when I studied the classical way, I mean with normal lectures and an assessment at the end of each course, then I think it was not a common way of thinking. I think it depends on the pedagogy of the educational program.

It was interesting that Erika made essentially no comments that indicated a ritual view of psychological knowledge, nor comments about psychological techniques that were not placed in a meaningful context: from what she said, this seemed to be a result of the PBL approach in her course. In terms of our model, she seemed to position herself in the bottom-right, with an obvious appreciation of the broadest aspects of each dimension, though with statements that showed awareness of all levels except for the ritual approach to knowledge. Her professional identity and engagement seemed to be correspondingly high.

Engagement and Identity Formation as a Function of Students’ Learning Experience Our four case studies, of two discipline-based groups and two individual students, have displayed empirical support for our basic thesis that students’ views of their future profession, and their pedagogic experiences in preparing for this profession, have a direct impact on their sense of professional engagement and on their development of a professional identity. Individual students entering higher education have sometimes quite different ideas about their studies and their future profession, and as they progress through their studies, these ideas are modified and augmented. In particular, views of discipline, of learning and of profession are modified by the particular discipline that students are studying, the particular pedagogical approaches and arrangements that are in place, and the particular profession for which they are preparing themselves. The characteristics of the political science course in the first case study include a focus on the generic skills associated with traditional humanistic education, along with a diffuse notion of the professional work of a “political scientist”. The important role of the thesis, an individual extended study, underlines these characteristics. In the case of design, the students seem to show an essential engagement with the various aspects of the design profession, and this is supported by a student-focused pedagogy that relies heavily on group critique and investigation of design problems

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(which will be discussed later in Chapter 7). The individual case of George illustrates someone who has grappled with some of the ritual aspects of mathematics and is struggling to reconcile a personal interest in the subject with a somewhat lower level of engagement with the profession, in a discipline that could be viewed as the quantitative analogue of the qualitative political science. In the final case study, Erika indicates the important role that a problem-based learning approach can play in the development of her essential engagement with clinical psychology and the development of her identity as a professional psychologist. These cases illustrate the complex interactions between formal studies (and the learning and teaching approaches that are used) and professional work situations. Each of them shows social group interactions that contribute to both group and individual identities. Further, social and individual identities contribute and build engagement with studies and also with work. For educators, it seems essential to acknowledge the different locations of identity formation and the important possible contribution of authentic situations where students have an opportunity to test their values and knowledge in legitimate activities. As Giddens (1991) points out, identity formation is at its core an essentially reflective activity. This emphasises the importance of the individual’s sense of being and how this sense of individuality is central to engagement, transformation and the development of professional identity.

Chapter 7

Professional Pedagogies: What Pedagogic Approaches Can Enhance Professional Learning?

Introduction In this chapter, we discuss how the combination of discipline-specific characteristics, as highlighted by the Journeymen project, and individual approaches to learning in a discipline, as highlighted by the Professional Entity project, can be used to consider how we may design pedagogy to foster the development of students’ professional learning. Our aim here is not to present an elaborate pedagogical program or system that will prescribe certain methodological procedures for learning and teaching in higher education. Rather, we wish to draw from our empirical data a set of concepts for thinking that can be used and contextualised to various educational designs for different disciplines and professional practices. We do this against the backdrop of a changing society, including changing demands of working life, and vigorous debate in universities on learning and teaching approaches and their relevance for working life. Contemporary work in professional positions requires not only specific disciplinary knowledge and skills, but also a broad range of abilities, including personal skills such as independence and the ability and confidence to learn for an unknown future. We suggest that an enhanced awareness of the importance of meta-knowledge, authenticity of learning tasks and the balance between individual and collective learning are concepts that might help educational designers, teachers and students. In the following sections, we will elaborate on these concepts and discuss how they can be built into the academic curriculum and help teachers to support students in their development. This in turn can help students to identify with their coming professional work and heighten their engagement with their learning. The first concept we will discuss is the notion of meta-knowledge, or the second-order “knowledge about knowledge” that is obtained by reflection on knowledge.

A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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Professional Pedagogies

Meta-knowledge It might seem self-evident that learning for a profession consists of acquiring the knowledge and skills that are embedded in the particular field of knowledge. From a socio-cultural perspective, it can be argued that in order to become a professional a person has to learn the language, symbols, repertoire of tools, and the methods, attitudes and values of that professional field. From our data, we can draw the conclusion that those students or novice professionals who hold the broadest conceptions of knowledge and learning in their field also display a meta-knowledge of the nature of knowledge in their discipline. Here, we mean meta-knowledge in a broad sense, not limited only to meta-cognitive processes as described from a psychological perspective. Our findings reveal that in addition to learning all the knowledge, skills and values embedded in the profession or disciplinary field, these students have also learned about this field, its development, history and traditions. The students give expressions of meta-knowledge about the usefulness of the discipline for the society, and the very purpose of the profession. We believe this is important knowledge to acquire in order to understand the boundaries and limitations of the profession and its relation to others. Learning about the discipline and the profession thus seems to play a vital role in the identity building or identification process. We argue that this meta-knowledge is part of the rational aspect (and specifically the rational generic aspect) of knowledge, helping the learner to locate their learning in a specific social field. Richardson, Abrandt Dahlgren and Higgs (2004) make a similar argument about meta-knowledge in the context of health sciences. They claim that an increased awareness of different sources of knowledge, built in part by reflective collaboration with peers, is a crucial aspect of developing a professional knowledge base that includes both explicit and tacit dimensions. What then are the implications of this for educational design? It seems important to include spaces for meta-learning in the curriculum. Here, students’ understanding of the professional knowledge base and implications for professional practice are challenged, not only in professional contexts but also in the university setting. The expectations of individual students can then become linked to the collective professional body of knowledge, which in turn can provide meaning to students’ learning tasks, explicating how what is learned in the university setting relates to a professional field of work. The issue of creating spaces for meta-learning is also linked to a second concept, the authenticity of the learning task.

Authenticity We have seen that expert students have a range of different expectations about their future professional work. The Professional Entity – which relates to learning for work – provides us with a means of interpreting current aspects of curriculum and critiquing them with the aim of developing the breadth of students’ views about

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work. Proponents of work-based learning and work-integrated learning (Boud & Solomon, 2001; Foster & Stephenson, 1998) suggest that the key to effective learning for work is a focus on the authenticity of learning tasks. In other words, the learning tasks have to be meaningful, realistic and “work-like” to students. It seems, though, that authentic learning can only happen at work when novice professionals are embedded within a particular work community, with all the social aspects that this implies. Then they can see the outcomes of their learning having an immediate impact on the workplace. In work-integrated learning programs, students move between the worlds of formal academic study and work-learning. There is a presumption that the authenticity of the work activity will stimulate reflection on the more formal academic aspects. However, there are large numbers of students who will be neither learning at work nor involved in work-integrated learning programs. How might such students come to experience an authentic (meaningful and realistic) learning? We are able to discuss two examples here, based on the particular psychology and design programs that we have introduced previously. The psychology program at Linköping University provides a measure of authenticity through the design of the learning and assessment activities using a problem-based learning format. In this case, PBL simulates a core professional activity of psychologists. Using this pedagogical method, psychology teachers are able to model an authentic work practice, provide a context in which content can be placed into meaningful scenarios, include activities that support collaborative problem finding and solving, enable students to work with others from diverse backgrounds, and stimulate students’ engagement with both disciplinary knowledge and the practical tasks at hand. PBL offers students an experience of autonomous and authentic learning, where they are challenged to take into account all resources and constraints to find the best understanding and solution of the problems posed. The design course at the University of Technology, Sydney, like many other such courses, adapts the studio practices of professionals to provide a physical space where design problems and solutions are collaboratively developed. The design studio provides an informal situation where student designers observe and comment on other students’ solutions to a design brief. These briefs are usually presented as authentic design work (for instance, designing the interior of an early childhood centre, or an ergonomic interface for small computers) and are assessed through presentation of the potential product to real clients. In this way, the drama, accuracy, tension and communication between designers and clients is simulated, providing an authentic learning activity combined with a developing picture of professional work as a designer. Student designers who participate in such activities also consider the broader social implications of their designs, including whether the materials used are environmentally sustainable, whether the product is suitable for use by a particular social group, or whether the work is aesthetically pleasing to a specific ethnic group (Petocz & Reid, 2008). In the psychology and design examples, authentic learning is established through the planned efforts of educators who themselves need to come to an understanding of professional knowledge, professional discourses and professional dispositions. We have seen that students have a variety of different relationships with these

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concepts, and so indeed do educators. It is for this reason that the development of authentic learning situations needs careful consideration. For instance, educators need to maintain or develop close links with their industrial or professional colleagues so that the pictures they paint of the profession, the knowledge they present and the activities they design, relate closely to those which are apparent and important in professional situations. Careful provision of learning activities that mirror specific professional situations gives expert students the opportunity to consider their own relation to the knowledge and practices of the profession. In turn, the knowledge, views and experience gained in the more formal areas of study are able to be reviewed and reconsidered once the students become novice professionals. As we have seen from these two different disciplinary examples, the pedagogical practice used needs to match what is common practice in the profession and the activities offer a basis for the development of meta-knowledge. This alignment may provide students and novice professionals a better space in which they can start to think of themselves as a professional in the area. Such problem-based learning approaches seem to be more common in some disciplines (such as psychology, medicine or design) than in others (such as engineering or statistics), and seem to have an overall positive effect on student learning (Dochy et al., 2003). They have been tried in many disciplines, even those where they are not commonly used. For instance, in the field of statistics, van Buuren (2006) and Bland (2004) report on using PBL approaches in the context of statistics for psychology and medicine respectively. Where PBL is not used for a whole course, it may be the case that one or more “capstone” subjects utilise the approach, as in the final-year statistical consulting subject discussed by Mackisack and Petocz (2002).

The Structure of Professional Curricula We can broaden our attention from the notion of problem-based approaches to learning and consider the whole issue of the ways that the structure and content of professional curricula are organised. Curriculum design in universities is related to the policy level in society at large, and these policies are subject to change with different governments. There are, however, also structures within universities themselves that impact on the design of curriculum. We know from previous research that academic disciplines are characterised by typical ways of viewing and producing knowledge (Becher, 1994; Abrandt Dahlgren & Dahlgren, 2003; Savin-Baden, 2000) and that these perspectives have an effect on how curricula are organised. We suggest that educational designers need to consider the various ways of organising curriculum for their possibilities of enhancing student learning. The examples from the Journeymen project showed three different ways of organising the content and these seem to have different impacts on the learning experiences of the students in the programs. The political science program has a typical academic focus and a sequential organisation of the subject matter. We argue that

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this type of organisation is driven by the internal logic of the discipline, which maintains the idea of basic learning before analysis, comparison or application. There is also a notion of incremental, stepwise progression that will gradually lead to a complete understanding of the field of knowledge and the development of generic academic skills. The mechanical engineering program resembles the political science program in the sense of having an academic focus, though this focus is blurred by the parallel organisation of courses. Students are required to take several courses at the same time, which can make it difficult for them to construct coherent learning experiences. In both these groups, the contextualisation of knowledge to working life occurs, if at all, late in the program; alternatively, it is left to the novice professionals to handle individually. Students in programs with a sequential or parallel organisation of curricula seem to be more focused on learning for the university than learning for the outside world. The thematic organisation of the psychology program, on the other hand, seems to integrate the academic and professional foci. The potential for contextualisation is enhanced through the use of real-life scenarios as the point of departure for learning. The differences between the design of these three programs – sequential, parallel or thematic – may be seen as reflecting the relationship to a particular professional world embedded in the various discourses of disciplines in higher education. The psychology program has a clear-cut professional role as the endpoint, while the engineering and political science programs instead expose different academic notions about what is characteristic of communities of practice encountered by professionals in their respective fields. In the following section, we will look at how this clarity or diffusion in professional fields impacts on students’ learning experiences.

The Effect of a Diffuse Field on Learning for Professional Formation One particular example of a diffuse field is the discipline of mathematics. The job of “mathematician” is not obvious, visible or well defined. It encompasses a wide range of careers that are related through the tools and techniques of mathematics. For many students, the nature of mathematical work is not at all clear, and hence it is not easy for them to make a connection between what they are learning at university and what they will be doing as a professional mathematician. University mathematics departments often have to contend with falling numbers of students choosing to study mathematics, possibly due to the diffuse nature of the profession, but certainly not helped by the standard pedagogy: “For many years now the majority of teachers and lecturers have been presenting the subject as if it was just a set of rules that needed to be learnt” (Thomas & Holton, 2003, p. 351). In classes of this type, students may be unable to see the relevance of mathematics to their own studies, professions or life situations. As one component of the Professional Entity project, we investigated students’ conceptions of mathematics and of learning mathematics, initially with a group of

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undergraduates undertaking a degree in mathematical sciences (mathematics, statistics, operations research) at the University of Technology, Sydney (Reid et al., 2003, 2005) and a group of recent graduates from the same degree (Petocz & Reid, 2006). In common with other discipline groups that we have studied, students displayed a range of conceptions about the discipline, from the narrowest view of mathematics as techniques, through a broader view of mathematics as modelling, to the broadest view of mathematics as an approach to life. They showed a similar range of approaches to their learning, from a narrow focus on course requirements, moving to a focus on the mathematical elements (models, datasets) themselves, to the broadest focus on understanding the world through mathematics. These correspond to the extrinsic technical, extrinsic meaning and intrinsic meaning aspects of the Professional Entity. However, there were some surprises that seem to be linked to the diffuse nature of the discipline and profession. In response to the question: “What do you think it will be like to work as a qualified mathematician?” a common reaction was something like: “No idea really, I haven’t done it yet, I don’t know.” It seemed that students did not have clear ideas about the professional role of mathematician, and that the pedagogy of their course had focused on the mathematical skills and techniques that were required to graduate as a mathematical scientist, rather than meta-knowledge about mathematics and the mathematical profession. However, this lack of knowledge about the nature of the profession of mathematics reflects a widespread societal view, as Candy explains: Candy: A lot of people ask me what degree I’m doing and I tell them I’m doing a mathematics degree and then they go ‘oh, what’s that going to get you to do in the real world?’ And, I’m not exactly sure myself, so I can’t really imagine what it will be like to work as a mathematician, or be recognised as a mathematician until I graduate, and a lot of people wouldn’t even realise, they will be probably thinking, ‘what can I do, what can a mathematician, like, offer me?’, in a sense, if you know what I am saying. It’s not like, oh, accountant, lawyer, like that’s just straight away ‘oh, I need one of those’, but like with a mathematician, ‘what can I do with a mathematician, what do I need one for?’, you know.

In terms of the pedagogy of the discipline, the diffuse nature of mathematics as a profession results in a dependence on the ritual aspects of learning, particularly in the earlier part of the degree program, but all the way through for some students. They seem to study various areas of mathematics, and various technical aspects of the subject, in discrete chunks, without any obvious connection to their future professional use. In traditional mathematics courses, there is little attempt to bring these disparate strands together, or to make connections with professional work as a mathematical scientist. Some courses, however, including the one that the participants were taking, contain introductory subjects about the nature of mathematics and mathematical work (one such is described in Petocz & Reid, 2008), and final subjects bringing the various areas together and illustrating their professional application, for instance a final-year statistical consulting subject (Mackisack & Petocz, 2002). Despite this general focus on the ritual aspects of the discipline, a paradoxical finding is that graduates reflecting on their mathematical education commonly cite problem solving as the most important skill that they have developed during the

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course (see Petocz & Reid, 2004), and many of them talk about problem solving in mathematics as well as beyond the boundaries of the profession, including their personal life. This would imply an engagement with rational knowledge, at both the rational substantive and the rational generic levels. Alistair, a graduate working in the area of mathematical finance, expresses this very nicely: Alistair: [What would you say that you find useful that you learnt about maths at uni, that you use now?] . . . So I think the methodology of just learning all the maths that you learn, you learn how to, like, if something’s really hard you learn how to cope with it at university and you take that out into the workforce. Like, if something’s hard you don’t just sort of drop it and let it go, you work out how to do it, and that’s what you have to do if you want to, I suppose, succeed or excel. You have got to solve the problems that other people can’t.

From the Journeymen project analysis (Dahlgren et al., 2005; Johansson et al., 2008), the answers of the Linköping political science students also reveal a field of study that directs students towards a diffuse profession. Their learning environment is rather homogenous, and the pattern of learning can best be described as “being a typical student”, that is, reading, trying to remember the essential parts, and meeting assessment requirements. The different aspects of knowledge in political science appear to students to be ordered in a sequence. First, they learn how political systems in different countries are designed, and then they are asked to compare them. Interestingly, for many students this form of lock-step pedagogy has thrown them on their own resources where they have to seek their own motivation for learning rather than seeing the learning in relation to a professional field. So, in general, students appear to be motivated by a personal learning project rather than by explicit plans for a professional career. As the overall field of political science is opaque to them, they focus instead on learning activities related only to the curriculum. In this sense, this diffuse field orients students towards a generic style of education. It is an educative and good subject, I think, but I don’t know if I want to do a whole program, if it is a profession that I really want, but it is a good course if you are looking for different kinds of things. It is broad and generally educational (POL2, First-year student).

Even for the senior students, the professional field still seems unclear. Their teachers are essentially the only professional role models that they meet during their educational program (Hult, Abrandt Dahlgren, Dahlgren, & Hård af Segerstad, 2003). Almost all students mention that they have a strong feeling that their teachers want them to be active participants in discussions, to defend their conclusions and standpoints in arguments with others. Interest in the discipline as such is regarded as the preferred source of motivation, of an intrinsic kind (Dahlgren et al., 2005). A good student is one who is motivated and likes his/her choice of studies, who doesn’t only study unreflectively but who studies to learn something. They [the teachers] want engagement, a will to learn (POL18, Senior student).

For many students, it is only when they are writing their final-year thesis that the nature of the profession becomes clearer, as a result of deep focus on a single issue and opportunity to apply the theories and methods of political science that they have learned previously.

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The Effect of a Clear Field on Learning for Professional Formation Where the professional field is clear, pedagogies and learning typically focus on the inherent requirements of that field. Looking once again at some of the empirical data from the Journeymen project, we find that psychology students at Linköping report quite a different learning experience than those in political science. Using a problem-based learning approach, they start their learning process with the formulation of a set of questions based on real-life scenarios provided as the starting point for their learning. They then proceed by gathering relevant texts for study. These texts are read thematically, rather than systematically, in order to understand and analyse the problems and questions that they have set out for themselves. I don’t look for knowledge through a complete book, but I focus on the parts that I want . . . to answer a question or solve a problem . . . so it differs sort of . . . one looks for more specific knowledge (PSY10, First-year student).

The senior psychology students notice an important feature of their studies; that the content deals with humans and, thus, also with the students themselves. Another significant aspect, mentioned by a majority of them, is that the most valuable learning situations occur during periods of clinical placements, ego therapy or working with clients under tuition at the department clinic. Knowing the characteristics of the professional field enables students to consider their learning holistically, and this seems to be strongly connected with the PBL pedagogy that underlies this particular course. Another example of a clear field is music performance. In tertiary music courses such as the one at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music the whole focus is on preparing students for their professional role as musicians. The organisation of the course would be described as thematic, rather than parallel or sequential. Every aspect of the pedagogy is clearly tied to this aim. Much of the course revolves around orchestral performance and solo preparation on the instrument or voice that the student has chosen, supported by subjects that focus on different periods of music, or different musical aspects such as composition or improvisation. Teachers are often practicing professional musicians, some of whom have achieved eminence in the field. Students are in no doubt about the characteristics of the profession, though – as we have shown in earlier discussion about the Professional Entity – they display the full range of conceptions about its nature, and the nature of music and learning in music. Simon, 3rd year performance student: Understanding that music is really a reflection of nature, a reflection of the world, and as a result how it relates to our other art forms. . . . In the Rigoletto paraphrase of Liszt there is one passage where you have thirds going up. But then you practice those passages at the time that you need it. And not just blindly sit there and practice double thirds for hours because it deadens the love for the subject, love for the piano, love for music, and indirectly it stops that process of being inquiring about it. Because the beauty of it is the continual problem – resolution, problem – resolution. To me it is the fascination of life.

Although the pedagogy is focused on professional preparation as a musician, many of the students do not end up making a career as a performing musician. Some

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of them move into teaching music at schools or privately (and this is sometimes seen as a form of failure), while others leave the profession completely. Further, the fact that only a small percentage of students will “make it” as professional musicians is often quoted by teachers during the music course itself, setting up expectations of professional exclusivity. Law represents another clear field of learning, and one that was studied as part of the Professional Entity project with a group of students at Macquarie University. As in most countries, lawyers in Australia are part of a high-status profession, and students starting a law course have a wide range of experiences of the legal profession built up over time through media, school and family life. Students know what they are getting themselves into before they even start the course, though it must be said that some pervasive media stereotypes about the legal profession are quite unrealistic, as students quickly discover. Kellie, early-year law student: If I want to be really successful and in a good firm then I’ll have to have the good grades, I guess. I think that’s the only way they can, you know, cull you down as a whole mass of students that comes swarming at them with résumés and, you know, it’s like ‘well, we’ll give it to the best students’, so, yep.

In some senses, the high status and visibility of law has allowed some law courses to utilise a sequential organisation of pedagogy, as various components of legal work (torts, criminal law, conveyancing, etc.) are studied one by one. Such a pedagogy in a different field could be considered to develop ritual knowledge, though in law, students seem to have an awareness of the role of these components, and hence are enlarging their rational substantive knowledge, and they are also engaging with the basic skills of legal work such as the ability to construct and deliver arguments, which develops their rational generic knowledge. Evan, senior law student: Probably the main thing is I want to know how to find the law, I want to be able to research and find out where it is, and probably to be able to critically, to critically work out problems myself, because I mean obviously, in ten years time I’m not going to remember everything that I learn on the Parramatta train every morning when I study, so I just want to be able to think for myself, so that when it’s finished, I can think for myself, and that’s all I’m really going to have. And I might think ‘oh what was that thing about Foucault?’ and I probably won’t remember it, but I’ll know how to look up Foucault and then research it and think, ‘oh, okay’ or look up a particular law. So probably just critical thinking, would be the main thing, but also a good understanding of the law itself, like good basics, obviously because that’s the job that you will be doing.

Balancing Autonomy and Interaction – Acknowledging the Diversity of Students In the course of this book we have presented students’ ideas about knowledge in their discipline areas, their ideas of learning for professional work, their ideas about identity formation and engagement, and the way in which they conceive of professional dispositions. Of course, while we speak of psychology or design or music students as a group, individuals are actually at the core of each learning enterprise.

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If we are not careful, we can fall into the trap of homogenising students – labelling them as first years, or student musicians, or Linköping students, and so on. Each of these labels suggests a certain commonality of student characteristics and pedagogical approaches. As educators, we take hope in identifying the common successes and problems of our students as a means of aligning our teaching methods to our ideas of what we think most students need. Our universities reinforce these aspects of commonality as we create curriculum with pre-determined sets of learning outcomes in which each unit presumes a prior knowledge and experience that places the current course in a certain context. However, despite these elements of homogeneity, we actually work in concert with people who have vastly different experiences and expectations from our own. This is a level of complexity that is rarely acknowledged in higher education. But what would happen if we took diversity as the starting point of our work with students? It may mean at a first level that we could not presume that the content of our courses was either new or relevant to students. It may mean that we should strive to recognise the cognitive and practical strengths that individual students bring to a learning situation. It may mean that we shift our habitual ways of teaching to enable a recognition of students’ autonomy in their choice of what and how to learn. These are ideas that have often been put forward in texts on adult education and learning. Self-directed learning has been a key concept to illustrate the need for adults to decide for themselves what and when to learn. We also know from research on problem-based learning that self-directedness in learning does not seem to be what students commonly practice in their day to day learning (Silén, 2000), even if this is what curriculum designers have set out as an important component of the learning environment. Instead, students seem to appreciate as highly the interaction and verbalisation of learning and understanding with their peers. This helps them to identify the relevance of their studies and to calibrate their own understanding in relation to alternative perspectives. When we think of such issues of autonomy and integration we recognise that complex interactions are taking place. On the one hand, we are proposing that each student be given the freedom to choose what they would like to learn and how they would like to learn it. On the other hand, we are suggesting that students learn through interacting with each other so that their ways of thinking are challenged. If a third hand were possible, we would see the dynamic potential of each novice professional critiquing and developing knowledge in the workplace. The complexity of interactions between these positions is in turn mediated by our own understanding of the nature of knowledge and its worth to our students. Clearly, if we adhere to the notion that knowledge is ritualistic in its nature, then we will reify this ritualism through the presentation of content in traditional ways. Since most students will have experienced this sort of pedagogy in the past, it is unlikely that many would object. However, knowledge presented in traditional ways to students also focuses on the epistemological (what people can do) rather than the ontological (who people are becoming). There are, of course, some professions where ritualistic knowledge may be favoured. Yet most employers would agree that workers with only a ritualistic approach to knowledge are less capable of adapting to the work place. If we

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proceed, instead, under the notion that knowledge is rational, then we afford ourselves a broader way of working with students. From this perspective we may be able to focus on the strength of student autonomy and allow different individual or group experiences to contribute to broader understandings of content. In a recent empirical study (Gordon, Reid, & Petocz, 2010), we investigated tertiary educators’ views of the nature of diversity in the context of their classes, based on interviews carried out by e-mail with an international group of 34 participants. The data were analysed using a phenomenographic approach that revealed an outcome space of four conceptions, with the intermediate ones regarded as aspects of the same level: (D1) Homogeneous. At the most limited level, students are seen as an assembly, with no focus at all on any aspect of diversity. The corresponding pedagogical approach is to ignore student diversity, expecting instead that students will “fit in”: this can have negative effects on some students but positive effects on others. (D2a) Groups. At an intermediate, but broader level, diversity can be seen in terms of different groups of students – those who have a non-English speaking background, those who are in the distinction stream, those who do not have the required background in mathematics. (D2b) Individuals. Also at the intermediate level, diversity can be seen in terms of individual differences between students, each with their own range of abilities and characteristics. For both intermediate conceptions, the most common pedagogical approach is to compensate those groups or individuals that seem to be disadvantaged, maybe with extra learning materials, tuition time or varied teaching approaches. (D3) Comprehensive. At the broadest level, diversity is appreciated both in terms of differences between groups of students and between individual students. Further, the diversity is not only acknowledged, it is often utilised as an essential pedagogical resource. As with the other outcome spaces that we have presented earlier in this book, it would seem to be appropriate to aim for the broadest level. Such celebration of diversity has the potential to significantly strengthen pedagogy. For example, when students are involved in collaborative learning activities they bring into play opinions and experiences that are the sum of their life experiences. In these situations, their previous experience is challenged by others and brought into a state of re-creation through personal critique and reflection. Recognising the strength of this form of diversity, and how one can personally learn from it, enables students to take to a new workplace a critical perspective. In such a context, novice professionals are challenged by different work cultures, colleagues, knowledge and activities and can bring into play their ability to critique their own knowledge and that of the workplace. If novice professionals can utilise their formal expert learning experience in the workplace, then they will be in a position to develop and change

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workplace practices and knowledge formation. In this way, workplace knowledge evolves through the active participation of workers.

Students’ Ideas About Their Own Learning It is a common idea, though an incorrect one, that the most limited ideas about a discipline and learning in that discipline are found in students in the first year of their course, while the broadest and most expansive ideas are found in final-year students. In our empirical research we have found a quite different situation: students showing the full range of conceptions – from narrow to broad – can be found at all stages of every university course that we have examined. Some evidence exists that the broadest conceptions are more common and the narrowest conceptions rarer in the later years of university courses (Petocz et al., 2007), but even in graduating classes, there will be some students who subscribe to the narrowest and most limiting views of their discipline and their profession. So our pedagogy at every level of tertiary studies needs to cater for this diversity. There are a number of ways in which this can be done, that apply quite generally to any discipline area and any level of study: these can be augmented by approaches that are specific to a discipline or year level. The first point is to help students become aware of the full range of conceptions about their discipline, their learning and their future profession (meta-knowledge about learning and profession). It is surprising how many students believe that their colleagues think in the same way that they do (of course this applies to lecturers as well, and indeed to other groups). The range of views that students have shown about their discipline and their learning can be discussed explicitly, maybe as part of the dialogue that usually accompanies the first assessment task in a unit of study. Becoming aware of others’ different viewpoints and the full range of views in a particular class or lecture group can be a powerful means of helping students to broaden their conceptions. Secondly, we can provide activities and assessments that encourage students towards the broader levels of understanding. Rather than focusing on technical components for their own sake, divorced from their context and meaning, they can be situated in activities that are somewhat more authentic such as meaningful problems and investigations. Consider the following pair of quotations from two of our students of mathematical sciences: the first, Danny, is reporting on pedagogy that inclines towards the narrowest conceptions, while the second, Chris, is highlighting characteristics of assignments that are encouraging the broadest conceptions: Danny: [Why would you want to rote learn things?] People do, and they do really well. [Well why is that?] Because if you are doing a lot of maths stuff and you have to reproduce proofs they just learn it all and write it all out. [And you think that is superior to your attempt to understand the stuff?] No, it’s not superior; I’d rather understand it, but you can get better marks for rote learning. Chris: Lecturers create them [assignments] in such a way that you have to understand your work before you answer, because most of the assignments that we’re given are actually real situations, they’re not just made up scenarios.

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Thirdly, we can encourage the exploration of the nature of working as a professional in the particular discipline (that is, the meta-knowledge about the discipline) and link students’ current studies to their future professional role. So rather than asking students to carry out some basic technical tasks, they can also be asked to investigate the meaning of these tasks within the particular discipline, and further to explain the results of their investigations to another participant in the professional context, maybe a colleague or a client. Such approaches can be used in any discipline. When students are aware of the range of conceptions of their discipline, their learning of that discipline, and its professional context, they will be more likely to discuss their learning with their fellow students, especially when opportunities are made for them in the form of group work in classes or laboratories and group assessment. And we should not forget that some students can have quite sophisticated views of their own learning, and can be strong advocates for a deeper approach. Julia, a student of mathematical sciences and participant in one of our series of interviews, expresses the situation better than many teachers could: Julia: There’s monkey learning and there’s proper learning. Monkey learning is finding out what you need to learn for the exam to get through, proper learning is finding out what’s behind the numbers that you are writing down so that you know for yourself. There are people that do very well in a subject because they learn what they need to know for the exam, but you ask them three or four weeks later and they couldn’t tell you. There are people that won’t do that well in their marks, but you ask them three years down the track and they will be able to explain to you how that matrix works or whatever you are talking about. There’s always a difference. And it takes a lot more time to learn the background than the ‘what you need to know’.

With this level of meta-knowledge about their own learning, students can play a significant and active role in designing their own learning experiences.

Envisioning a Broad Curriculum Most universities have traditions and entrenched interests surrounding professional education. The curriculum changes in response to developments in the nature of professional work, the characteristics of the student cohort and the teaching staff, and government funding and quality assurance initiatives. The model presented in this book implies that a range of aspects beyond demographics is important for the development of a curriculum that supports students’ movement into professional work. However, curriculum changes may be exceedingly slow, often developed by a single teacher, focusing on individual units and lacking overall coherence. Formal course reviews may only be undertaken rarely, every 7–10 years or so, and may focus more on bureaucratic rather than pedagogic requirements. In one sense, our model seems to imply an educational utopia where learning, curriculum, teaching and industry can be successfully oriented around developing students’ understanding of professional knowledge, work and dispositions, with outcomes that include ontological

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change. Yet, the reality is more of a dystopia, where bureaucratic constraints and academic frustrations play a greater role. When a particular form of new knowledge starts to dominate professional areas, universities respond by including some of the new material in individual units or creating whole new units of study, employing new staff who may be expert in the new area, and creating some sort of benchmark to monitor the success of the activity. However, the relationship between the content and activities in such a unit may not be integrated with others that students have available for study. In addition, when individual academics take possession of a specific unit, they often focus on its important content and the activities and assessments that they may use appropriately for that content. They may have scant idea of the features that are characteristic of their colleagues’ classes, or the overall aims of a program of professional study (Watts, 2000). This is one of the weaknesses of modern university education, and also one of its strengths. University courses are rarely seen in a holistic way by students or their lecturers. However, when the whole course has been completed, professional industries see that the overall qualification has a certain value to work. This disjunction between the practices of universities and the expectations of the professions places students in a difficult position. Expert students, who have a clearly-formed view of the importance of knowledge in each unit, the way in which knowledge from one area contributes to another, and a reflective and critical stance on their own learning, are usually able to navigate their way through formal courses to arrive well prepared for their professional destinations. Students who are less expert may be more confused and surprised when asked to make use of their formal knowledge in work situations. Educators can make a significant difference here. The pedagogies employed across the range of units in a course need to provide situations where students are challenged and involved in reflective activities. It seems essential that the curriculum allows flexibility for students to develop their professional capabilities. This is one of the most difficult and critical issues for designers of curriculum, as professional formation cannot occur simply in one unit, but occurs over time across the range of learning, work and social experiences that students have. The research presented in this book leads us to the view that professional thinking, ethics, sustainable development, communication and creativity are essential components of professional formation. These attributes are aligned with the intrinsic meaning view of the Professional Entity and include the most expansive conceptions of professional areas and learning as component parts. In any discipline area these attributes of professional formation take on different aspects and importance. For instance, let us take the idea of creativity. We need to consider how the notion is construed by teachers, students, and others in the profession. In the context of a first course, is creativity seen as the ability to solve, or find a problem? In practical terms, how can creativity be assessed in a learning task if it has not been defined within that task? Is creativity the ability to see unusual applications for a body of knowledge? Is creativity an issue that is discussed, or assessed, or even recognised? And how might a lecturer set up learning situations where this

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can occur? Each professional disposition could be scrutinised in this way within each single unit, or it could be considered across the units of an entire degree. It seems that the development of such professional attributes enhances students’ ability to find professional jobs and to contribute in meaningful ways to a professional workplace. Such attributes are highly valued by the workplace, yet within a university course they are sometimes ignored or glossed over to allow more time for “essential” components of content. In the development of curriculum at unit level we need to ensure that there are synergies between the expertise of the teacher, the aims of the overall curriculum, the professional components that are especially suitable in that course and the manner in which the unit supports other units within the curriculum. Previously, we have looked at the notion of creativity as something that could be explored at the whole curriculum level. In a sequence of units, such a professional component needs to be introduced, applied and expanded. A common mistake made by educators is to repeat the introductory level of engagement with a professional component from unit to unit rather than expanding its focus. In order to avoid this, university departments need to ensure that teachers are aware of the pedagogical frame and knowledge orientation of each unit in order to achieve coherence across the whole course. As an example, in a first-year unit, it may be appropriate to examine the creative thinking of others using examples that integrate with a range of professional perspectives. It may be more appropriate in a second course to encourage students to express creativity by trying multiple forms of analysis. This can ensure that they are able to discuss the suitability of different models for different outcomes. In a final-year course, students can be encouraged to demonstrate creativity by first finding the problem, then developing appropriate solutions and finally communicating the results to a third party – a colleague or a client. Teaching materials are needed that engage students at a wider level with such an expanding notion of professional components. And students should be invited to acknowledge that these components of professional formation exist, can be developed, and are integrally tied to professional work. University students will generally have some ideas about their future work, but they are not always aware of the relation between these ideas and their conceptions of their discipline, their learning in the discipline, and their overall approach to studies. If we as teachers discuss these ideas with them, we can make explicit the relationship between narrower and broader views of professional work and limiting and integrated conceptions of learning in a subject. Limiting views of a profession can reinforce students’ limiting views of their subject and their learning. For instance, a class environment that emphasises learning specific definitions and techniques, and a formal examination that tends to reward rote learning may encourage students to focus on the acquisition of appropriate techniques. Even those students who are aware of more expansive conceptions will be encouraged to work using the more limiting viewpoints. However, broader views of professional work can give students the opportunity of seeing their future work in a more integrated way. A learning environment that makes appropriate connections to their

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future professional skills and role can broaden students’ views of their subject and learning. For instance, a class environment where the implications of knowledge for professional practice are regularly pointed out and discussed will encourage students to focus on the professional context of their studies. Even those students who entered the class with more limited conceptions will be challenged to work using the broadest viewpoints.

Chapter 8

What’s the Use of Higher Education?

Introduction This concluding chapter starts with a brief summary of the main points of the previous chapters in the book. We do not intend the question in the title of the chapter to be interpreted as a doubt about the usefulness of higher education but rather to encourage the kinds of investigations that the book is presenting and scrutinising. The historical background of higher education shows that persons with a tertiary qualification have formed communities that have for a long time been identified as professions. With a starting point in Abbott’s (1988) definition of professions, we discuss the similarities and differences between liberal arts and contemporary professional higher education. We then summarise our findings about the nature and characteristics of expert students and of novice professionals. The main focus of the book as we stated at the beginning of the first chapter has been to . . . show how students navigate their way through learning and become effective students and how they shift the focus of their learning away from the formalism associated with the university situation towards the exigencies of working life. In this sense we explore how people move from being expert students to novice professionals.

Throughout this book we have provided a number of examples from our empirical research. These investigate students in a wide variety of disciplines: music, medicine, engineering, psychology, law, business administration, statistics, design, political science and mathematics. Some of the students have been enrolled in classical academic study programs, such as medicine and law, linked directly to old-established professions. Others represent more recently-developed professions, for example, engineering, psychology and business studies. Others, moreover, could be classically regarded as liberal arts studies, for instance, mathematics and political science. We have, however, preferred to include all these groups in our analyses and tried to understand their experiences of the transition between higher education and working life without any preconceptions about what this transition may mean to them. Our results indicate that differences between the classical and the new A. Reid et al., From Expert Student to Novice Professional, Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education 5, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0250-9_8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

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professions and the liberal arts programs are usually smaller than might be expected when it comes to the formation of an identity in working life. Our way of accomplishing the aim of this book, that is, showing how people move from being expert students to novice professionals, has been to integrate and revisit empirical findings from our two comprehensive research programs in Australia and Sweden. We have also referred to relevant theoretical and empirical investigations of the transition from higher education to working life, as well as identity formation among academic professionals, whenever that has been found to contribute to our understanding of these complex processes.

The Nature of Professions Abbott (1988, p. 8) indicated some of the features of a profession in his definition that professions “. . . are exclusive occupational groups that apply somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases”. At the core of Abbott’s definition is the notion of relationships between the general and the specific. Abstract knowledge seems to be the type of knowledge that is formulated in general terms and so requires some sort of contextualisation in order to be useful when encountering specific problems and situations in working life. Higher education is the only part of the education system that combines knowledge development in a collective as well as an individual sense (Bowden & Marton, 1998). The former refers to knowledge that is new to humanity, that is, knowledge development through the process of research, whereas the latter comprises the knowledge gained by an individual through the process of learning, which is new to that particular person but not to people as a whole. Furthermore, a common characteristic of collective knowledge formation is the process of subsuming specific instances under more general concepts and regularities – the development of scientific principles. The challenge for the individual learner is more often in the opposite direction, to identify specific instances of a general principle, though of course not all learning can be characterised in this way. The combination of these two kinds of knowledge formation in academia, expressed in the context of cooperating with the surrounding society, has bestowed on academics a high status and level of trustworthiness. Research is basically aimed at developing knowledge that is as general as possible. Major contributions from science have generally meant that processes and mechanisms in nature, society or culture that have previously been given specific explanations have been found to be instances of more general phenomena or processes. Consequently, the content of knowledge formation in the individual sense has become ever more abstract, making it more challenging for students as well as teachers. Each of the student groups involved in our studies has experienced knowledge formation in ways that reflect the nature of the pedagogy in a discipline and relate to the professional area that they will inhabit. Abbott’s suggestion that professionalism involves abstract knowledge used in context by an exclusive group (the profession) enables an interpretation of the knowledge domains experienced by expert students.

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In some cases, as we explored in Chapter 7, novice professionals will have to work hard to make use of the knowledge encountered in formal education. In that case, the profession is referred to as diffuse and requires the new professional to utilise a rather creative approach to making formal knowledge contextual. In other, clearer fields, formal knowledge also adopts formal applications. The important notion of “in context” implies that there are transferable, global, ways of thinking about knowledge (the meta-knowledge to which we referred earlier) that reside alongside the more formally-acquired, disciplinary-based-knowledge. From our research, it seems that rational generic knowledge forms may be the most adaptable for novice professionals to utilise. Another central idea from Abbott is that professions develop through interprofessional competition. This introduces a dynamic aspect to the development of professions, including the hypothesis that some current professions will be “downgraded” in the future, whereas some occupations may be “upgraded” to professions. . . . the degree of abstraction necessary for survival varies with time and place in the system of professions. As social work and nursing have become collegiate professions, medicine has become postgraduate. How abstract is abstract enough to be a professional? (Abbott, 1988, p. 9)

It is also a fact that professions requiring higher education have developed at a rapid pace during the previous decades. The information and communication technology (ICT) area is a good example. The whole field has developed around a technical innovation, which in itself has not been usual in the past, yet this innovation has fundamentally changed the ways that people communicate, and the access to whole fields of professional knowledge. For instance, technical legal knowledge and medical knowledge were once the preserve of legal and medical professionals, but the availability of the internet has changed that. Prior to the development of ICT, lawyers and doctors (and other groups such as clergy) developed as professional groups in response to basic human needs. Now, knowledge that used to be exclusive to a particular profession is easily found by the non-professional. What is harder to find, however, is the professional know-how to contextualise and apply the knowledge in its most efficient and useful form. In this regard, the important aspects of a professional education now seem to be the “value-added” components, the graduate skills, competencies and dispositions. ICT is certainly not the last of the newcomers with demands to be recognised as academic professions. It remains to be seen whether Abbot’s prophecy in the quotation above will be even more applicable in the future and the diversity of academic professions will increase. However, focusing on the issue of “How abstract is abstract?”, we can see that exclusive knowledge is at the core of a profession. As previous chapters in the book attest, there is a close interplay between the academy, the status and knowledge of a profession, and the ways in which expert students and novice professionals negotiate and make use of professional knowledge in different social domains (such as the classroom or workplace). In an interview-based study of university research mathematicians’ ideas about mathematics and coming

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to know mathematics, Burton (2004) started with an epistemological model developed from an extensive literature, postulating that mathematics is a subjective and social phenomenon, communicated through human networks, and intimately connected with the people who do, learn and teach mathematics. This is in contrast to the accepted view, particularly amongst professional mathematicians, of mathematics as objective knowledge, codified and transmitted inertly, and separated from the people involved with mathematics, whether as doers or learners. Nevertheless, the mathematicians’ views of their own mathematical work supported her conjecture: in general, they did research and “learn” mathematics in ways described by the model presented in her book. Burton suggested that mathematics students’ experiences as learners mirror those of professional mathematicians researching aspects of mathematics. On the basis of this, she argued for a pedagogical approach to mathematics that was built on the idea of learners as researchers. In this example we recognize that university researchers are also professionals in that field. This provides an interesting challenge, as the field of professional mathematician is rather diffuse outside the academy, though one view of it is clear to those within. Hence, the focus on teaching professionalism to student mathematicians is mostly based on the professionalism required of the academic workforce. For expert students in this system, it would seem that they may possibly require, as Abbott suggests, an ability to make sense of abstract knowledge in a social context that enables their survival as workers, and mathematics as a profession, beyond the academy. It seems likely, given the commonalities found in our investigations of a wide variety of discipline groups, that the underlying idea of building pedagogy on professional practice applies in other disciplines as well.

The Expert Student So, what does it mean to be an expert student? Many times in this book we have quoted the words of students in a variety of disciplines as they talk about their subject, their learning and their thoughts of their future profession. Expert students have overcome the problems of the transition from compulsory schooling to university studies, have become familiar with the world of university learning, and have made a commitment to studies that are an expression of the choice of their next steps in life. In Barnett’s phrase, they are expressing a “will to learn”. Expert students are in the process of broadening their conception of their discipline and learning in order to include an essential and personal connection, over and above their engagement with the discipline itself, and the techniques of which it is comprised. They have moved beyond studying aspects of their discipline simply because they are part of the curriculum, are aware of the role and importance of their expanding subject knowledge, and are developing an appreciation of the role of skills and dispositions that are beyond their specific discipline. They have some familiarity with the characteristics of their future profession and are in the process of integrating this with their current studies. They look forward to their professional roles, to becoming

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professionals, and they utilise their teachers’ professional experience of the field to guide them in the appropriate direction. In a somewhat simplified way, we could describe such knowledge and identity formation as a process taking place through the interplay between three different spheres. On the one hand, there is the academic curriculum of the discipline, with its syllabuses, methods of teaching and types of assessment. A second sphere comprises the practices of the corresponding profession, with their rites and traditions, economic and social status, and characteristic work tasks. The third sphere comprises students’ expectations regarding their studies as well as their future as professionals. The distances between these spheres define the degree of difficulty involved when attempting to form a coherent and manageable identity in the first stage as students and in the second stage as professionals. The most distinctive feature of students’ everyday life is that they spend their time learning new things through reading or writing texts, listening to their teachers or discussing with their fellow students. Falchikov (2005) cites several studies indicating that students in higher education may have to develop a certain kind of “street-smartness” in order to cope with the extensive reading tasks required by many programs in higher education. There are some indications in the Australian and Swedish research programs reported here that the skills that students develop in order to manage their own studies may also be useful and valued by them after they have spent some time in working life. These skills include, for instance, the ability to “read” situations in order to come up with a feasible strategy for managing them. Novice professionals in disciplines such as engineering and political science, who report on rational and generic relationships between higher education and working life, seem to particularly appreciate such skills. From a theoretical perspective, our point of departure has been that students, as they adjust to the requirements they encounter in higher education, develop a repertoire of knowledge, skills and dispositions. We have attempted to describe the processes whereby students develop their identities as students, their expectations and notions of their coming role as professionals and later their identification as professionals in the workplace. One of our key questions has been to what extent and in what senses these skills, knowledge and dispositions are useful as they enter the workforce.

The Novice Professional To look further along this process of becoming a professional, we can ask the question: What does it mean to be a novice professional? As part of the investigations comprising the Professional Entity and Journeymen projects, we and various colleagues have interviewed professionals in a variety of disciplines – psychology, music, political science, mathematics, mechanical engineering and design – who had recently finished their studies and joined the profession. We have also quoted their words at various places in this book as they discuss their professional role,

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their current challenges and the features of their university studies that have had an impact on their professional work. Although they are all professionals in their various fields, they still show a range of conceptions about their discipline and their professional work, from a narrow focus on the technical aspects, through broader focus on the particular discipline, to the broadest focus in which their professional and personal lives are integrated. They have acquired not only the requisite discipline knowledge for their profession, but in many cases they are also aware of a range of generic skills and dispositions that they have developed through their tertiary studies: the problem-solving skills of the engineers and mathematicians, the empathic skills of the psychologists, and the communication skills of the designers and musicians. From their university studies, they have taken their expertise in formal learning and are now applying it in learning at work. At the same time, they can reflect on their formal studies and draw that experience into their current work context, using their ability as expert learners to assess their current work situation. And despite these commonalities, they each maintain their own, individual, unique professional trajectory; and in fact for some of them their trajectory is taking them away from their first-chosen profession into new areas. It seems that an important aspect of work and learning for a novice professional is the ability to reflect in, on and about work. This particular ability is, in part, developed through higher education, but normal social interactions also contribute. In the context of councillor or therapist development, Rønnestad and Skovholt (2004) identified the themes that contributed to early-career professional formation. The ability to reflect, to shift focus of attention and to function emotionally result in professional growth. Here, the affective domain seems most important, where confidence and self-efficacy contribute to novice professionals’ upward trajectory. While universities tend to focus on the acquisition of professional knowledge, the profession demands a lifelong personal and professional integration process as the core of workplace professional development. The results of Rønnestad and Skovholt’s study show clearly that interpersonal experiences in the personal life domain (early family life and adult personal life) and the professional life domain (interacting with clients, professional elders and peers) are significant sources of influence for novice professional development. In another study, Scott and Yates (2002) interviewed Australian novice engineers (and their supervisors) about their professional successes. They pointed out that it is when things go wrong, when an unexpected or troubling problem emerges, that professional capability is most tested. At times like these, a novice professional must use the combination of a well-developed emotional stance and an astute way of thinking to “read” the problem situation and figure out an appropriate strategy for addressing it. Such a strategy brings together the job-specific and general – the rational substantive and rational generic – knowledge and skills most appropriate to the situation. Further insight is provided by Eraut’s (2007) study of early-career learning at work. He explored the ways in which early-career accountants, engineers and nurses learn in their workplaces – what they learned, how they learned and what factors influenced their learning – with the aim of improving the quality of student work placements. Based on information obtained from interviews, he developed

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a typology of learning processes that identified a wide range of ways of learning within a workplace, some of them not traditionally viewed as learning by students. These included, for instance, the standard work process of trying things out, the notion of learning from mistakes, and the processes of being mentored and of “shadowing” an experienced colleague. Our research and the studies that we have cited indicate that novice professionals should be able to situate their capabilities in the context of work. They need to relate their personal aspirations and social life to their work life, to develop new work-related knowledge, and to adopt a reflective stance to evaluate prior and current knowledge and experience. In this regard, the horizontal and vertical dimensions of our model of professional learning combine in the working life of the novice professional to provide a basis for what they can do, and who they are becoming.

A Scenario for the Future of Higher Education Designing Curricula – Professional Contextualisation or Disciplinary Organisation One of the main findings in the Swedish research program was the distinction between the ritual and rational functions of higher education, and in the latter case between the substantive and generic skills and knowledge derived from higher education. Somewhat unexpectedly, novice engineers appeared to be the group where a majority mentioned the ritual character of higher education, whereas novice psychologists reported on substantive as well as generic rational contributions of their education. There are a couple of possible explanations for these findings. First, the Linköping psychology program is a problem-based learning program, and second, it may be best described as emphasising a professional rather than a disciplinary perspective on the curriculum. When the students enter working life, they already have a familiarity with the tasks that are waiting for them there. Classical liberal arts programs can differ substantially from professional programs in this respect. It appears, however, that there are also considerable differences between professional programs. Such differences may even be apparent between units of study in a single course, or in the different pedagogical sub-cultures found in different institutions or countries. In one university, the pedagogical approach may focus more on the liberal components of learning, while in another, in the same professional discipline area, the focus may lie more on the specific disciplinary knowledge. Further, individual students will hold different conceptions of learning, with different approaches to study, prior experiences and knowledge, and varied expectations of the professional area. For educators, it is important to identify the various characteristics of educational programs that could facilitate the transition from higher education to the workforce for the novices.

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Introducing central concepts in their most common contexts seems to be a better strategy for deepening learners’ understanding than presenting the same concepts in a de-contextualised disciplinary structure. The meaning of scientific ideas is developed through a collective process of knowledge formation that in most areas reaches back several centuries, or even millennia. Through the years, these concepts have also been integrated to form sophisticated structures of mutually interdependent relationships; often they also possess aesthetic qualities, such as those in the sciences and mathematics. However, to build curricula on these conceptual structures seems to maximise difficulties for most learners. Most people learn better by having the opportunity to experience phenomena and problems in real life that can be understood by using these general concepts. That is the core idea behind introducing real-life situations to enhance understanding, as is done, for instance, in problem-based learning. In one sense, this approach recognises that for a learner this may represent a useful first encounter; appreciation of the broader, historical perspective may be left for later. From another perspective, knowledge situated in authentic workplace situations is likely to become meaningful and relevant, providing an opportunity for the learner to develop an intrinsic interest in the area (and hence the collective knowledge developed over generations is more likely to gain significance). Contemporary research on learning indicates that learning is a highly contextual process, in which the specific features of the context determine to a great extent the way that people set about learning. The basic idea is not only to learn for and about contexts of application, but also to learn through experiencing the context. This seems to lead to a greater readiness to take on professional tasks independently. Moreover, reflection on experiences of specific learning situations may be a way of expanding the utility of particular experiences to broader contexts. Indeed, the first PBL programs at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in 1969 were motivated by identification of a gap between pre-clinical and clinical parts of programs in health care education. In the past 30 years, PBL has become an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on the authentic nature – the contextual orientation – of the professional knowledge being presented to students. An extension beyond PBL is an approach where students first find the problem and then investigate its solution. In a work context, professionals are often called upon to critique work practices and find problems as a first stage in constructing a solution. In health education, the theoretical and practical components are often placed in disjunction, with one preceding the other: the assumption is that students should first know the theory and then apply it in practice. The same approach is often taken in teacher education programs, statistics courses, archaeology courses, and so on. An alternative approach is to integrate theoretical concepts and practical applications. The recent trend to investigate a “teaching-research nexus” is evidence of this. Engineering and chiropractic disciplines (for instance) sometimes follow a “sandwich” apprenticeship model where learners regularly head out to the workplace to experience practice, which is expected to provide the context to understand theoretical concepts. Experiencing learning within contexts that enable an appreciation of realistic professional environments seems to be a way of helping students and novice


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professionals to integrate their knowledge of the discipline, of the work and of themselves. Traditional curricula are designed according to the idea of preparing students for a particular context. In some cases, they are supplemented by periods of professional practice that may yield knowledge about context. For instance, the psychology students in the Journeymen project are requested to undergo psychotherapy themselves, which of course gives them experiences of what it is like to be a patient in psychological care. Study programs designed for learning in context may bring about an even closer relationship between education and practice. Of course, such speculation addresses the central reason for engaging in higher education. Apprenticeship within the profession can provide an authentic work-oriented learning experience. Yet, this approach misses the broader collaborative generation of professional knowledge and relies rather on the practical know-how of workplace mentors. In essence, a university education provides a more global education, while a workplace education focuses on contextual know-how. Yet both, according to our participant group, are valued by student and novice professionals entering into working life.

Empowering Students in Matters of Influence Students’ motivations for learning are many. They can have a strong intrinsic relationship with the discipline, or a strong desire to do a particular type of job. However, when it comes to the learning situation, teachers can have a great deal of influence. Indeed, the maintenance of students’ motivation for studies is one of the most important tasks of their teachers (and is identified as such by students themselves, see Petocz & Reid, 2003). Some students appear to lose their initial intrinsic motivation for studies during the course of their educational career. According to a recent Australian study (AUSSE, 2009), close to 30% of students surveyed had considered leaving university early and this seemed to be related to a perception that the learning environment was not supportive enough. Some of them may replace their initially-intrinsic motivation with an instrumental one, which in all likelihood will jeopardise their ambition to really understand the phenomena dealt with in their studies. Sharing the ownership of the learning task is a good way of maintaining and enhancing motivation for learning. It has been empirically demonstrated (Marton, Hounsell, & Entwistle, 1998) that a surface approach to learning is encouraged when students are requested to learn at the demand of others in order to be able to answer someone else’s questions. A surface approach to learning means that words as read or spoken become the target of learning in themselves, jeopardising understanding and insight as an outcome of learning. In terms of our model, this means that a surface approach to learning is related to components of work that align with the extrinsic technical level and offer a low feeling of engagement with studies. Professional knowledge is likely to be perceived as ritualistic. A more fruitful approach to learning would be a deep approach, wherein learning proceeds through the learners reflecting on and imagining the reality referred to

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through written or spoken language. The idea of having learners share the ownership of the learning task is that they would maintain their intrinsic motivation for learning rather than being forced to substitute an extrinsic, instrumental motivation. This is also suggested by the intrinsic meaning level and rational (generic, as well as substantive) components of our model. Anyone who studies in order to get answers to their own questions is unlikely to adopt a surface approach to learning. The student-centred approaches in the design of study programs – problem-based learning, case-based studies, projects – all share the idea of the importance of students’ contribution to formulating the learning tasks.

Upgrading the Significance of Reflection As we have mentioned previously (in Chapter 7), one of the most important features of higher education programs is their capacity to enhance students’ development of meta-cognitive skills. In this sense, we are concerned with expert students’ and novice professionals’ capacity to know about knowing. Pintrich (2002, p. 223) states Although there are different kinds of metacognitive knowledge, three general types are of particular importance. Strategic knowledge refers to knowledge of strategies for learning and thinking. Knowledge of tasks and their contexts represents knowledge about different types of cognitive tasks as well as classroom and cultural norms. Finally, self-knowledge is a critically important component of metacognitive knowledge.

These meta-cognitive strategies are context dependent and require an interplay between students’ knowledge of self, their own motivations for being in the context, their recognition of the social dynamics of the context, and their intentions for the future use of knowledge. The vital importance of reflecting on one’s own thinking and action has been pointed out by various authors (e.g., Schön, 1983, 1987). This meta-cognitive act is a way of making our own thinking accessible and, hence, subject to change and improvement if found necessary. In this respect, reflecting individually or in groups on a just-finished learning process shares many features with what goes on in a workplace team evaluating what they have accomplished during a working day or week. Brookfield (1995) suggested some approaches to meta-cognition through his examination of the nature of reflection and criticality. He proposed a critique of the ideology underlying pedagogical practice as people learn the dominant ideologies that are embedded in everyday situations. A presumption of formal learning is that the recipients are participants and provokers of social transformation through practice. As adult learners, expert students and novice professionals become aware of the means and practices available to them to identify and re-appraise acquired inhibitions. Since people act and think according to previous experience, it is important to subject those experiences to critique in order to move forward. Here, Brookfield pushes us to examine the relationship between ideas, experiences and espoused practice. He also identifies the element of pragmatic constructivism, which emphasises the way that people learn how to construct, and deconstruct, their


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own experiences and meanings, looking for acknowledgement of variation and aiming towards inclusivity. An example, for instance, is the way in which universities provide individual learning support for students with a disability, or different educational backgrounds and life experience. In this context, we are invited to consider how people come to learn within a social framework. The implication is that learning about research practice must include the broader intellectual and social climate of which students are part.

Interprofessional Learning – A Necessity in a Super-Complex World? The idea of a world that is “super-complex” was proposed by Barnett (2004). In this sense, professions are no longer reliant only on their own specific professional practices, but also on interplay between several professional areas. An example of this form of complexity is found in the health sciences and is referred to as interprofessional learning (IPL). IPL is based on the idea of bringing several different professionals to interact with each other for a better quality of work. A definition of IPL that has frequently been referred to is the following: “Occasions when two or more professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care” (CAIPE, 1997). The IPL concept was originally developed in a health care context. Learning about, from and together with other professions in the health care team is viewed as a crucial aspect of the formation of a professional identity (Barr, 1998, 2002). IPL can include different sorts of learning interactions. At one extreme, it can mean the collocation of professionals to examine common issues such as ethics. Or it can mean bringing in professionals from one area to teach from their perspective a group from another professional area. In that instance, the aim is to loosen boundaries and reduce stereotypical behaviours. Further, IPL can refer to different professional groups learning skills, attitudes and practices that have a commonality, in order to focus on a particular problem. Each of these aspects, and others, has implications for the meaning and practice of different modes of learning, and these are not merely a matter of varying the contexts of learning. The differences regarding the outcomes of learning from, about and together with others are of equal importance for the possible contributions of IPL. Learning about others is a way of “decentring” from one’s own perspective and getting to know those of others. Learning from others may result in lateral deepening and/or vertical expansion of competence. Learning together with others may be a way of establishing a common base for joint action. Although IPL is recognized as a means of professional learning in the context of the health profession, it could now be extended into other professional areas. As an example, the contemporary issue of climate change involves research scientists in various areas, such as agricultural groups, ecological groups and mathematical modellers, as well as educational bodies. There is a certain strength that comes with the cross-integration of professional knowledge that enables creativity in problem

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solving. The principles of IPL could usefully be included in a wider range of university contexts. Even though the various professions represented in working life often work in close co-operation with each other, they come to their professions from different educational programs. In traditional teaching they only come across each other occasionally, even if there is a demand in one area for expertise from another. In such a situation, disciplinary myths abound and professional stereotypes are created: learning about other professions during the course of studies may be one way of counteracting them. There is also evidence (Scott, 2006) that each discipline area has its characteristic range of pedagogic approaches, and these are often quite different from the approaches shown in other disciplines. For instance, team projects are very common in management and commerce, but rare in the fields of health and education: on the other hand, these latter fields use various forms of work placement and clinical practicum that are almost unknown in the management and commerce areas. This suggests that a closer collaboration of different professional groupings could introduce a greater variety of pedagogical approaches, to the benefit of all groups. There are many aspects to learning about others, but the main aim is, quite reasonably, that professionals who work together should also know more about the underlying perspectives that characterise not only themselves but also others. Frequent encounters during a course of studies, including discussions in multidisciplinary groups of students, would be likely to contribute to a better mutual understanding of and subsequent respect for each other’s competence and work. They may also help to develop the ability to “decentre” from one’s own professional role and so understand one’s own profession in a richer and more nuanced way than before. The concept of decentration is borrowed from Piaget (1954), who made the observation that children up to a certain age lacked the ability to observe and understand the world from any other perspective but their own. Decentration denotes just this ability, to take others’ perspectives on the surrounding world and thus to subsequently better understand one’s own perspective. The ability to move from a perspective that recognises only one’s personal view to another where multiple views are taken into account is central to the development of professional dispositions (discussed in Chapter 5). From the empirical data on business students’ ideas surrounding cross-cultural sensitivity, we can find an example of the Piagetian concept of decentring. The narrowest conception, awareness, acknowledges only that others exist, and this is brought about by noticing that someone is different from the self. However, judgments are made about those others only from the position of the self. In the broader knowledge conception, students have acquired some knowledge regarding other peoples’ beliefs, experience and culture. Now they are able to use that knowledge to mediate their own actions in relation to those others. In this sense, they are able to include these people at the periphery of their own professional world. Finally, the broadest conception adds the notion of respect for difference, acknowledging that others may react validly in quite different ways to those that the individual may think is normal. This issue of respect also indicates that individuals can change their way of thinking and acting

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in response to the needs and knowledge of others. This example from our studies on professional dispositions highlights one of the ways in which interprofessional learning may occur. It seems that the way people characteristically understand and carry out their tasks in working life is established in their thinking to the extent that it becomes very difficult to decentre. Interprofessional learning could be one tool for bringing this to people’s attention and helping them in this process. Learning about others creates possibilities for discovering and understanding alternative knowledge cultures. Learning from others may in many respects be regarded as unproblematic, but may also carry with it feelings of potential threats to the professional identity, or to the traditional hegemonies and hierarchies of working life. Empirical studies demonstrate that differences exist between different professional groups, even when they perform identical professional tasks, for instance, assessing the level of pain in patients in a post-operative ward (Sjöström, Haljamäe, Dahlgren, & Lindström, 1997; Sjöström, Dahlgren, & Haljamäe, 2000). To learn from others could mean, in the first place, a horizontal extension and vertical deepening of knowledge. Workplace hierarchies are characterised and maintained by differences between groups as regards the depth of their professional knowledge, that is, to what extent they are familiar with the scientific underpinnings of the actions they are asked to and able to perform. In a somewhat simplified view, lower down in professional hierarchies personnel know what, when and how they should act, whereas at higher levels workers also have knowledge about why they do something in the way that they do. At an even higher level, professionals are also expected to have the insights necessary for varying their ways of acting due to differences in circumstances.

Learning as a Social Phenomenon Learning together with others may be best understood when put in a context of communities of learning. A community of learning is also a community of practice: Wenger (1998) does not separate learning from action, but rather regards learning and action as mutually intertwined aspects of human life. His theoretical framework may serve as a good starting point for understanding the mechanisms and processes whereby people come together to enter learning projects of different kinds. Thus, a community of practice theory offers an essentially social theory of human learning. It assumes that we learn and develop our identities through interaction with other humans, and with artefacts such as books and other media (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Persons within a community of practice are not simply a group of people: they also share an overall view of the sphere in which they work, and a sense of belonging and mutual commitment to their common projects. Moreover, a community of practice guides the attention of members through the negotiation of meaning that constantly takes place within it. For example, members of a community could give a positive meaning to interprofessional learning, making it something desirable. Successful communities of practice are based on three key features: mutual engagement, that is, the way that members engage with

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and respond to each others’ actions; joint enterprise, the way that participants understand, contribute to and take responsibility for the development of the community; and a shared repertoire, the ability to utilise and engage with the range of resources employed (Wenger, 1998, p. 73). However, the notion of community of practice, while slipping gracefully into higher education as a useful idea that explains group-work dynamics, also provides university educators with challenges. Wenger’s communities are generally situated in the workplace, where workers are provided with financial reward for participation, and often have a choice about the type of workplace they inhabit. Students at university receive, instead of a financial reward for participation, a grade that evaluates the quality of their contribution and compares it to the quality of other students’ work. So while university learning groups may look like workplace learning communities, they have essentially different purposes. Workplace groups generate a particular sort of knowledge-in-action that becomes part of the culture of the workplace. The knowledge that is generated by group learning in universities is often limited only to those particular group members. The cultural artefact of that knowledge moves out of the institution with the students, leaving the next group to rediscover aspects of the same knowledge. As we have seen with some of our participant groups, the approaches to learning and teaching sometimes align with professional working practices and at other times they do not. A challenge for educators, then, is to try to simulate the forms of work that are generally used in a particular profession, so that when students become professional workers they are able to consider their new situation and bring to it their prior learning experiences. Interprofessional learning may ultimately result in members of different professional groups sharing a conception of learning and knowledge, which may be to the benefit of all for future negotiations of meaning. By sharing the meaning of key concepts, professionals can avoid conflict over priorities and subsequent actions that may jeopardise the quality of their work. Last but not least, it is vitally important that members of different professions that work together share ideas of division of labour and hold harmonised conceptions of each other’s competence. Taking the idea of IPL into university situations, we suggest that closer relationships may need to be developed between particular professional areas and the academy in general. There are already notable examples of this form of educational integration in the areas of health and medicine, and also in accounting, teacher education, management and architecture. Working professionals and professional groups – much like the medieval guilds – have an interest in maintaining the standard and quality of their workers. Where there is a university component to their education, professional bodies explicitly (but more often tacitly) anticipate that the university will provide future workers who already have an appreciation of the values and ways of working that are common to that profession. It must be added that in order for IPL to have a role it is also necessary for the professions to preserve their distinctive features. To eliminate differences between professions would certainly result in a lower quality of work. The challenge for universities, if they are to embrace this concept, will be to ensure that students are involved in a diverse range of disciplinary (and extra-disciplinary) studies, and that

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the distinctive differences, variations and contributions of the different disciplines remain a focus of student work. In IPL the learning task is shared among representatives of different professional education programs, and an important aim is to experience the perspectives held by others, to listen to the way they talk about their tasks and competencies and to construe knowledge in collaboration with each other. The sceptics of IPL (and PBL) have claimed that they will both result in less focus on professional core competencies such as the ability to handle acute situations in health care. In a recent article based on a survey of physicians by the Swedish Medical Association (Faresjö, Wilhelmsson, Pelling, Dahlgren, & Hammar, 2007), we did, however, demonstrate that students who take part in educational programs designed according to PBL principles, and emphasising IPL, assess their skills at cooperating with other professional groups in health care at a higher level than those reported by former students in traditional programs. Obviously, IPL is a practice that can benefit learners already in a workplace, our novice professionals. However, there is a value to this multidisciplinary approach that could well be integrated into higher education, and PBL is often seen as the means of doing this. We would like to suggest, however, that there should be a deliberate blurring of boundaries between the academy and professional work. As we have seen from the model presented in this book, students are more likely to develop a professional identity and be engaged in their studies, and then their work, if they have a good understanding both of the forms of knowledge that are favoured by the profession and the forms of thinking about the profession that are meaningful, and hence encourage a personal connection to the value of the profession. We return to the notion that learning is often also a social process, whereby members of a community of learning negotiate the meaning of phenomena and problems in their practice. This process of negotiating meaning in a community of practice could just as well describe what goes on in a tutorial group in PBL, as students come together to compare notes after having studied individually. Hence, formal as well as informal learning situations should be designed to facilitate mutual interplay between members of such a community. Knowledge – the outcome of learning – is important, and if it is commonly construed, it is in all likelihood also useful for common use. The way that students acquire knowledge and the kinds of relationships that they establish with their professional fields during their studies are just as important. Ways of working in groups as professional workers and as learners are shifting in the context of developing technologies. Much of the theoretical material regarding group-work processes assumes the importance of the social dimension of learning. That is, people learn from carefully observing the characteristics and conversations of others, and then adapt and try these for themselves. This form of professional attribute acquisition occurs when there is a social situation where people are physically present. However, today an increasing amount of professional work is undertaken at a distance. Twenty years ago, e-mail was a new and special means of communication. These days, it is as common practice as the telephone was, and, like the telephone, provides a space where particular protocols and

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discourses are used. This example of a common practice could be extended to any of the communication options currently-available (and others yet to be imagined). For instance, the learning and professional spaces within Second Life mimic real life in that course materials are provided, and virtual lecture theatres (complete with blackboards – surely a throwback to an earlier technology!) can be designed. What is different about such virtual communities is that the essential personal qualities of the participants can be significantly changed by the medium. In Second Life, for example, participants choose an avatar that masks normal social cues such as gender, ethnicity and age, and this is true also of e-mail. However, other forms of computer-mediated socialising can include these aspects. There are currentlyavailable learning softwares that enable video and audio participation and allow the quick uploading of documents and applications. There is a major distinction at present between these sorts of communications and real social situations, and that is the idea of turn taking. In normal group-work situations, participants are with each other physically and take cues from each other regarding interactions and interruptions (and there is also a cultural dimension to these activities). In a virtual group, the protocols for turn taking are less clear. Time will tell how learning and professional discourses are changed as a result of technological development. But the potential changes in group-learning dynamics need to be considered seriously by educators, since a strong element of professionalism in the future will be familiarity with technology-enhanced communications.

Towards Professional Formation In this book we have described and discussed the meaning of learning for professional work from the perspectives of expert students and novice professionals. Understanding the complex ways that this group experiences professional formation can enable university educators and workplace mentors to better understand their contribution to student and graduate learning and work. We use the term “professional formation” to comprise the totality of expert students’ and novice professionals’ experiences of preparing to work in a particular professional area. This book has had six major themes and various questions associated with each of these themes. We started by questioning how we as educators can understand the notion of learning for the professions. Over the past few decades, there has been a proliferation of research that has examined various aspects of learning from within the academy and also in the workplace. In each case, the research has endeavoured to uncover and resolve aspects of learning, pedagogy, curriculum and so on, which are of interest to the individual researcher and the higher-education community as a whole. We have investigated the utility of combining research efforts to develop a broader understanding of the professional learning milieu. Our particular perspective has been to explore the experiences of students and novice professionals. In that sense, our model is built on empirical data from a particular group involved

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in higher education. Of course, the model presented may have looked different and focused on different aspects if the participant group had been different. For instance, research undertaken with senior executive staff in higher education might produce a model that focuses on the importance of and differences between funding models and policy. Research involving those who work using information technologies may lead to a model which includes a stronger dimension of computer-mediated networking. However, the approach with which we undertook our meta-analysis of our combined data is important. From our individual national perspectives, we can only provide results that illuminate specific disciplinary contexts. Our method of analyst triangulation has enabled us to re-evaluate our original data and our original findings and integrate them in a way that gives a better overall picture of professional learning. So, in answer to our first substantive question, “How can we understand learning for the professions?”, we respond by saying that we can carefully examine the experiences of those undertaking learning from the professions and articulate the major themes that impact on such learning. In our introductory chapter, we explored the literature of higher education and exposed four dominant discourses: at that time we proposed a fifth, that of professional discourse. In the context of this book, professional discourse consists of the attitudes, language, values, activity and knowledge comprising professional formation. We asked the fundamental question, “How do novice professionals see themselves?”. Our data showed that expert students and novice professionals saw themselves as part of a broad context. Within higher education, they saw themselves as pre-professional learners and took on pseudo-professional roles in a simulacrum of professional practices. The Professional Entity (in itself a meta-analysis of students’ and professionals’ views of learning for work) provides a generic model of such learning that situates the student as a peripheral member of the professional community. The generic aspects of the Professional Entity were also contextualised from the perspective of different professional areas. At present, the areas where the Professional Entity could be applied have been examined in only a few professions. For educators from other professional areas, exploration of how the Professional Entity could be envisaged would help in tying down the essential values and practices of a particular profession, and hence, assist in related pedagogical practices. An important aspect of the Professional Entity is the recognition that the intrinsic meaning aspect represents a way that students see themselves as fully-engaged members of the profession. This has a strong ontological component; the discourse is one of becoming or being a lawyer, musician or statistician. At the centre of higher education are the forms of knowledge that comprise disciplines. In a loose collaboration, most institutions will draw particular disciplines together on the basis of their knowledge claims. For instance, there might be a faculty of science, or humanities or health within each higher education institution. These faculties are not only commonly tied to funding models but also have at their heart particular epistemological views. Faculties of science tend to contain “hard” disciplines where experiments using quantitative research designs may illuminate aspects of the world. Faculties of humanities may design research that is more sociological and inclined to use qualitative or mixed-methods approaches to, again,

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illuminate aspects of the world. We asked in our book, “What does knowledge mean to (novice) professionals?” and came up with an answer that showed that students can understand the nature of the discipline they are studying in quite sophisticated ways. We found that our participants did not see such knowledge in isolation, but in relation to the pedagogies in which they participated. In all cases, despite the knowledge claims of the discipline, students found that they were part of a broad social enterprise and sought to participate in that enterprise in various ways. This involvement included the important issue of how they were disposed towards broad social issues. We asked the question, “How are professional dispositions developed in higher education?”. This question is rather different from ones asked by proponents of generic skills or graduate competencies. In that case, the emphasis is placed on what students can do or demonstrate and suggests that competence is rather more important than the ontological question of who the student is becoming. Dispositional thinking, however, enables students to expand their inner self in relation to professional work. We focused on professional dispositions that are usually seen as difficult to include in pedagogical situations, including creativity, ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural sensitivity. However, our student and novice professional participants were quite able to distinguish critical elements of these dispositions and appreciate their importance for situating themselves in general professional practice. An issue that we have touched on throughout this book has been the development of a professional identity. The discussion is a complex one as students’ identity development is based on several factors. Here, however, we have focused on professional identity and how that professional identity is developed. To find answers to the question, “How is professional identity developed?”, we turned once again to our students’ comments. However, this is an issue that is dealt with rather obliquely in the data. For some, the profession is a relatively unknown quantity (such as the case with the student mathematicians) and for others a very apparent one (such as the case with the student psychologists). Yet it is the culmination of their experience of knowledge in the profession, the position of the profession in the public domain, their relationship with professionals in the area, and the way that the profession is presented within pedagogy that contributes to professional identity formation. Indeed, pedagogic approaches seem to have a galvanising effect on the development of a professional identity. For instance, the use of the design-studio practices of open work, critique and public presentation provide authentic professional experiences for students. In essence, it seems that the more authentic a learning situation is, the more it develops students’ identity as professionals in the area. The formation of professionals, the path from expert students to novice professionals, requires creative pedagogical approaches. Each profession values different skills and knowledge, has a particular approach to knowledge development and use, an associated way of behaving, and corresponding pedagogies. Our book has shown ways of understanding this process within different professional areas with the idea of assisting students and teachers to decode that profession for learning. The learning of such professional attributes need not be solely located in the academy, but could be collocated with workplaces, through the approach of interprofessional

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learning, the involvement of professionals with pedagogy, the involvement of students in work situations, and the alignment of learning with authentic work practices. But in the centre of all this are the expert students and novice professionals. For them the focus is not what they know, but who they are becoming. This is essentially an individual orientation to learning, which is a contrast to the current massification of higher education, but one which educators could well use to reappraise their practice. At the end of the journey of higher education, an expert student will become a novice professional, and it is their aims and aspirations that we should support.

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Author Index

A Abbott, A., 119, 120–122 Abrandt Dahlgren, M., 26, 104, 109 Adams, T., 80 Ahlström, G., 47 Albanese, M. A., 7 Andreson, L., 12, 80 Antepohl, W., 64 Atweh, B., 80 Axelsson, R. M., 87, 90 B Ball, S., 12, 80 Barnett, R., 3, 6, 9, 30, 32, 55, 63, 70, 82, 88, 122, 129 Barr, H., 129 Barrie, S., 5, 69 Batchelor, D., 8 Bauman Knight, A., 4 Bauman, Z., 87 Baxter Magolda, M., 91 Bayer, M., 25 Beaty, E., 30 Becher, T., 53, 87, 106 Beem, B., 4 Beijaard, D., 37 Bennett, N., 69 Bhatia, V., 36 Biggs, J., 47, 80 Billett, S., 12–14, 32 Bishop, L., 27 Blake, R. L., 7 Bland, J., 64, 106 Booth, S., 21 Boud, D., 2, 12, 16, 105 Bowden, J., 19, 120 Braddock, R., 72 Brennan, J., 6, 54 Brookfield, S. D., 128

Bruce, C., 21, 47 Bryson, J., 80 Burton, L., 122 C Caçkowska, M., 25 Cantisano Terra, B. R., 6 Caracelli, V. J., 27 Carré, C., 69 Chaiklin, S., 21 Coates, H., 9 Colliver, J. A., 7 Corti, L., 27 Crawford, K., 47 D Dahlgren, L., 7, 53, 55, 90, 106, 109 Dahlgren, L. O., 5, 7, 21, 25, 26, 31, 52, 53, 79, 90, 106, 109, 131, 133 Dall’Alba, G., 30 Davies, A., 23 Dochy, F., 7, 106 Domeij, E., 64 Dortins, E., 23 Down, C., 69 Dunne, E., 69 Dyball, M., 4 E Entwistle, N., 47 Entwistle, N. J., 127 Eraut, M., 11, 124 Etzkowitz, H., 6 F Falchikov, N., 123 Fallows, S., 16 Fallshaw, E., 12, 80 Faresjö, T., 133

149

150 Feldman, K., 62 Fensham, P., 21 Fink, L., 4 Forsberg, P., 64 Foster, E., 105 G Garrick, J., 2, 16 Gebhardt, C., 6 Gee, J. P., 26 Gibbons, M., 6 Giddens, A., 87, 101 Gijbels, D., 7 Glaser, B., 27 Gordon, S., 47, 113 Graham, W. F., 27 Greene, J. C., 27 H Hager, P., 36–37, 69 Haigh, M. J., 80 Haljamäe, H., 131 Hammar, M., 133 Hammer, S., 69 Handal, G., 25 Hård af Segerstad, H., 26, 109 Haslam, S. A., 87 Hellmundt, S., 80 Henkel, M., 13, 32, 92 Higgs, J., 104 Hill, E., 4 Holton, D., 107 Hounsell, D., 127 Hult, H., 26, 109 Hunter, A., 87 J Jackson, M., 80 Johansson, K., 26, 92–93, 109 Johnsson, M., 36–37 Johnston, B., 6, 54 Jones, A., 64, 79 Jönsson, L., 21 K Kamvounias, P., 4 Kaptein, M., 69 Karseth, B., 25 Kaufman, P., 62 Keeling, R., 4 Kember, D., 47, 88 Kinzie, J., 27 Kogan, M., 6 Kuh, G., 8–9, 88

Author Index L Laursen, S., 87 Lave, J., 14, 131 Lee, K., 88 Li, N., 88 Lindström, B., 131 Linell, P., 21 Long, G., 8 Loughland, T., 21, 80 Loxton, J., 9 Lucas, U., 21 Ludvigsson, J., 64 M Mackisack, M., 106, 108 Magolda, P., 91 Marginson, S., 11 Marra, R., 52 Marton, F., 19, 21, 30, 47, 120, 127 McArdle, P., 64 McDowell, L., 80 McLean, K., 72 Michaelsen, L., 4 Mitchell, S., 7 Montgomery, C., 80 N Nagarajan, V., 23 Neumann, R., 53 Nicholas, J., 47 Nowotny, H., 6 Nyström, S., 15, 48, 54, 91–92, 94 O O’Neill, P., 64 Overton, J., 80 P Palmer, B., 52 Parry, S., 53 Patton, M. Q., 27 Pelling, S., 133 Peters, M., 10 Petocz, P., 21, 23, 47, 72, 79–80, 105–106, 108–109, 113–114, 127 Piaget, J., 130 Pintrich, P., 128 Postmes, T., 87, 96 Pramling, I., 53, 55–56 Prosser, M., 47 R Reid, A., 4, 9, 13–14, 21–24, 32, 35, 47, 72, 79–80, 89, 92, 94, 96, 105, 108–109, 113, 127

Author Index Richardson, B., 104 Richardson, J., 8 Rizvi, F., 12 Rønnestad, M., 124 Ross, P., 4 Ryan, J., 80 S Säljö, R., 21 Salling Oleson, H., 36–37 Sandberg, J., 21 Savin-Baden, M., 106 Scheyvens, R., 80 Schoch, H., 4 Schön, D., 128 Schröder, A., 47 Schwartz, M., 69 Schwartzmann, S., 6 Scott, G., 124, 130 Segers, M., 7 Seymour, E., 87 Sharrock, G., 8 Shrestha, M., 15 Silén, C., 112 Sin, S., 79 Singh, M., 15 Sjöström, B., 131 Skovholt, T., 124 Slowey, M., 10 Smith, G. H., 23 Snow, C. P., 53, 87 Solbrekke, T., 25 Solomon, N., 12, 105 Solomonides, I., 13–14, 32, 89, 92, 94, 96 Star, C., 69 Stephens, J., 16 Stephenson, J., 105

151 Strauss, A., 27 Svensson, L., 21 Swaab, R. I., 87 Symes, C., 55 Szkudlarek, T., 25 T Taylor, P., 7, 72 Teichler, U., 6 Thomas, M., 107 Thompson, D., 4 Treleaven, L., 4 Trigwell, K., 47 V Van Buuren, H., 106 Van den Bossche, P., 7 Verloop, N., 37 Vermunt, J., 37 Vernon, D. T., 7 W Walters, D., 80 Watson, D., 10 Watts, C., 11, 116 Webster, A., 6 Weed, M., 27 Wenger, E., 2, 13–14, 16, 32, 57, 64, 88, 96, 131–132 Wihlborg, M., 81 Wild, K., 80 Wilde Larsson, B., 47 Wilhelmsson, M., 133 Willis, S. C., 64 Witzel, A., 27 Wood, L., 46, 48, 54, 56 Wood, L. N., 23

Subject Index

A Analyst triangulation, 27, 29, 33, 135 Attributes, 4–5, 9, 11, 15, 17, 29, 69–70, 73, 78, 81, 95, 116–117, 133, 136 Australia, 1, 19, 22, 27, 33, 41, 69, 72, 74, 77, 78, 94, 96, 111, 120, 123–124, 127 Authentic learning, 94, 105–106 Autonomy, 11, 93, 111–114 C Capabilities, 4, 6, 16, 55, 60, 69, 71, 77, 82, 116, 125 Communication, 2, 4, 17, 36, 40, 44, 52, 69, 87, 105, 116, 121, 124, 133–134 Communities of practice, 2, 13–14, 32, 57, 88, 94, 107, 131–133 Continuity, 52, 61, 63, 66–67 Creativity, 13, 17, 29, 69–70, 72–73, 75–77, 79, 81–82, 89, 94, 116–117, 129, 136 Cross-cultural sensitivity, 29, 69, 72, 74, 77, 79–80, 130, 136 Cultural imperialism, 12 Curriculum, 4–5, 9–13, 16, 29, 32, 56, 58–59, 63, 65, 72, 79–83, 87, 103–104, 106–112, 115–118, 122–123, 125–127, 134 D Discontinuity, 52, 61, 63–64, 67 Discourse, 2–3, 5–7, 13, 16–17, 26, 35–50, 55, 58–59, 93, 97, 105, 107, 134–135 Disposition, 1–2, 12, 17, 20, 29, 32–33, 49, 67, 69–83, 105, 111, 115, 117, 121–124, 130–131, 136 E Educational background, 33, 129 Engagement, 1, 7–9, 13–14, 16, 20, 24, 29–33, 46, 55, 74, 81–83, 85–86, 88–90,

92–101, 103, 105, 109, 111, 117, 122, 127, 131 Epistemological, 3, 5, 7–8, 14, 26, 53, 63, 66, 71, 88, 90, 112, 122, 135 Epistemology, 2, 51, 66, 80 Ethics, 4, 13, 17, 29, 70, 72–73, 75–79, 81–82, 116, 129, 136 Ethnicity, 2, 12, 33, 134 Expert students, 1–17, 29, 32–33, 35–37, 46–47, 49, 51–52, 54–55, 57, 63, 66, 71, 81, 104, 106, 116, 119–122, 128, 134–137 Extrinsic meaning, 23, 28–29, 35, 40, 43, 45–46, 71, 86, 98–99, 108 Extrinsic technical, 23, 28–29, 31, 35, 39–40, 42, 45–46, 48–49, 71, 86, 97–98, 108, 127 F Formal studies, 1–2, 9, 16–17, 37, 46–49, 52, 54, 56–57, 60, 63–64, 101, 124 G Gender, 2, 12, 15, 33, 37, 48, 134 Generic skills, 4–5, 17, 51, 60, 62, 69, 71, 78, 81, 91, 93, 100, 124–125, 136 Group work, 4, 77, 87, 115, 132–134 H Higher education, 1–17, 20, 24–25, 28–29, 31–32, 39, 48, 52–54, 57–58, 62–64, 66–67, 69–83, 88, 91, 100, 103, 107, 112, 119–137 I Identity, 1, 3, 5, 7–12, 14, 16–17, 20, 25–26, 29–33, 36–37, 46, 59–61, 81–82, 85–101, 104, 111, 120, 123, 129, 131, 133, 136

153

154 Internationalisation, 9, 12–13, 80–82 Interprofessional learning (IPL), 129–133 Intrinsic meaning, 24, 28–29, 31, 35, 40–41, 44–46, 48, 71, 86, 99, 108, 116, 128, 135 J Journeymen, 14, 19–20, 22, 24–26, 28–29, 31, 33, 41, 46, 51–53, 57–58, 63, 65–67, 71, 78, 85, 88, 90–92, 103, 106, 109–110, 123, 127 K Knowledge abstract, 120, 122 formal, 16, 52, 116, 121 legal, 45, 49–50, 121 professional, 1–2, 4, 8, 10, 14, 16–17, 26, 32, 51–67, 69, 81, 90–91, 104–105, 115, 121, 124, 126–127, 129, 131 L Learning and teaching approach, 4, 17, 59, 65–66, 101, 103 at university, 2, 22, 27, 107 at work, 2, 105, 124 Legitimate peripheral participation, 14, 32 Liberal arts, 3–4, 57, 65, 119–120, 125 N Novice professionals, 1–2, 6, 9, 15, 17, 19–20, 25, 28–30, 33, 35–67, 69, 71, 81, 91, 104–107, 112–113, 119–121, 123–125, 127–128, 133–137 O Ontological, 3, 5, 7–8, 14, 24, 26, 30, 32, 38, 40, 53, 71, 83, 86, 88, 90, 94, 96, 112, 115, 135–136 P Pedagogies, 5–7, 32, 55, 58–59, 66, 85, 96, 103–118, 136 Phenomenography, 19, 21–22, 24, 26, 30, 35, 37–38, 60, 72, 77, 80–81, 113 Problem-based learning (PBL), 7, 100, 105–106, 110, 126, 133 Professional discourses, 2, 17, 37–38, 47–50, 105, 134 Professional dispositions, 2, 17, 20, 29, 32–33, 49, 67, 69–83, 105, 111, 117, 130–131, 136

Subject Index Professional entity, 14, 19–20, 22–24, 26, 28–29, 31, 35, 37–49, 64, 66, 71–72, 78, 85, 89, 99, 103–104, 107–108, 110–111, 116, 123, 135 Professional formation, 2–3, 5, 11, 14, 16–17, 36–37, 49, 92, 107–111, 116–117, 124, 134–137 Professional identity, 1, 2, 7–8, 10, 14, 16–17, 26, 31, 36–37, 61, 85–101, 129, 131, 133, 136 Professional knowledge, 1–2, 4, 8, 10, 14, 16–17, 26, 32, 51–67, 69, 81, 90–91, 104–105, 115, 121, 124, 126–127, 129, 131 Professional work, 2–3, 5, 8–10, 14–17, 19–20, 22–27, 29, 31–33, 36–44, 46, 48–49, 51–52, 54–57, 61–62, 64–66, 69–73, 78, 81, 85–89, 97, 99, 100–101, 103–105, 108, 111, 115, 117, 124, 132–134, 136 Q Qualifications, 4, 6, 11–12, 15, 55, 80–81, 116, 119 Qualitative meta-analysis, 20, 22, 27–29 R Rational, 7, 26, 29–31, 50–52, 62–67, 71, 86–87, 91, 98–99, 104, 109, 111, 113, 121, 123–125, 128 Rational generic, 26, 28–31, 51, 62–65, 71, 86, 98–99, 104, 109, 111, 121, 124 Rational substantive, 26, 28–29, 51, 62–63, 71, 86, 98–99, 109, 111, 124 Recontextualisation, 52, 67 Reflective practice, 55 Ritual, 26, 28–29, 31, 51–52, 61–64, 66, 71, 86, 89, 97–98, 100–101, 108, 111, 125 S Sense of being, 13–14, 32, 92, 94–96, 101 Student mobility, 12, 80 Sustainability, 13, 17, 29, 69–70, 72, 74–77, 79–82, 136 Sweden, 1, 19, 21, 24–25, 33, 41, 52, 60, 98, 120 T Teamwork, 4, 17, 69, 81 Trajectory, 3, 48, 55, 57, 61, 63, 65, 67, 88, 91, 93–94, 124

Subject Index Transition, 1–2, 6–7, 14–15, 17, 25, 32, 36–37, 48, 52–57, 60, 63–64, 67, 69, 85, 88, 91, 119–120, 122, 125 U University of professions, 10

155 W Working life, 1–3, 5–7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 25, 29, 31–32, 37, 45, 48, 51–58, 60–67, 71, 85, 88–89, 91–92, 99, 103, 107, 119–120, 123, 125, 127, 130–131 Work-integrated learning, 105

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